What are you reading the week of October 7, 2023?

I finished Second Foundation by Isaac Asimov, and I've started Foundation's Edge. It's funny to look back at these old books and see the future that they imagined. I loved the nuclear powered kitchen knives. Everything had a tiny nuclear power source in it. The late 1940's were such a long time ago.

It took a few days for the copy I ordered to show up at my local branch of the NYC Library, but I am finally reading the modern classic, The Handmaid's Tale by Margaret Atwood.

Still plugging along on The Secret Horsepower Race (all it's cracked up to be) and Chiefdoms, Collapse, and Coalescence in the Early American South (somewhat underwhelming). The Deep Sky and Catastrophe at Spithead are next in line.

I'm reading All Boys Aren't Blue by George M. Johnson for Banned Books Week. I love a good memoir!

Enjoying this audio via Libby ~

The Senator's Wife: A Novel
by Liv Constantine

I just finished reading the novel Lady Chatterley's Lover by author D.H. Lawrence.

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I'm about to start Stephen King's new novel, Holly.

In the world of audioboos, I'm listening to the highly enjoyable Love in a Cold Climate by Nancy Mitford.

The Diving Pool – Yoko Ogawa
4****

The subtitle calls them “three novellas”, but none is longer than 56 pages, so they are more accurately categorized as short stories. Regardless, I really enjoyed this collection; each was very different from the other two, but all dealt with relationships. It is the kind of literary fiction I love.

In the title story, a lonely teenager has a secret crush on her foster brother and spends time each day watching him practice his dives at the school pool. As she contemplates this infatuation, we learn more about the family and how she feels set apart, not only at school but at home.

Pregnancy Diary is NOT the diary of a pregnant woman, but rather of that woman’s sister. The narrator, who lives with her sister and brother-in-law, records how her sister feels about her pregnancy, and how it impacts everyone in the household. There is a rather other-worldly feel to this narrative, and the ending makes me wonder if the whole thing is a dream.

In the final story, The Dormitory, a young woman tries to help her cousin find accommodations at the university, suggesting the same building she stayed in when she was in school. It’s somewhat dilapidated but the price is right. What begins as a routine story, however, evolves into a horror tale of sorts. Where is her cousin? What is that dark spot on the ceiling? What happened to all the other tenants? My heart was in my throat as she gathered her courage to investigate further.

Started this audio via Libby ~

Bookshop by the Bay
by Pamela M Kelley

Horse – Geraldine Brooks
Digital audiobook performed by James Fouhey, Lisa Flanagan, Graham Halstead, Katherine Littrell and Michael Obiora
5*****

A chance encounter at a luncheon put Geraldine Brooks next to Harold A Closter, director of Smithsonian Affiliations. He has just supervised the movement and installation of a horse skeleton that had long been in on of the Smithsonian “attics” and was now on permanent loan to the Museum of the Horse in Lexington, Kentucky. Brooks is an avid horsewoman and soaked up as much information at that luncheon as she could. And so her next novel was born.

The novel is based on the real story of the horse known as Lexington, his extraordinary racing career, and even more extraordinary career as a stud. Brooks could not find much information about Lexington’s Black groom, so she based the character of Jarrett on the few details she could glean from the histories of other people involved in the stallion’s career, embellished by what she knew was true about treatment of slaves during the era.

In the author note she writes that while doing this research it became clear that the book could not just be about racing, it also had to be about race. And she made the decision to not only involve the historical era of slavery in America, but also the continued issue of racism in the present. To do this she used the ubiquitous dual timeline so popular in historical fiction these days.

I have to say that Brooks does a marvelous job of this device. She has a contemporary story line that parallels how Lexington’s skeleton eventually came out of mothballs to be the center of the exhibit in Kentucky. She also changes point of view between the various central characters. Moving back and forth between the contemporary discoveries of the skeleton and painted portrait, to the events in antebellum Kentucky, she weaves a story that I found compelling, fascinating and moving.

I’ve read several of Brooks’s novels. This one is now my favorite.

The audio is performed by a cast of very talented voice artists, who each take on one or more of the narrators: James Fouhey as Jarret; Katherine Littrell as Jess; Michael Obiora as Theo; Graham Halstead as Thomas J Scott; and Lisa Flanagan as Martha and Mary Ball Clay.

>10 BookConcierge: I loved reading Horse. The audio sounds great.

I finished The Last Devil to Die, which was great, and started an October reread of The Ghost and Mrs Muir by R.A. Dick.

>10 BookConcierge: >11 Copperskye: I read Horse earlier this year and loved it. My first by Brooks, so I will definitely be reading more by her.

The Burglar In the Closet – Lawrence Block
3***

In this second episode of the series, Bernie Rhodenbarr gets roped into stealing from his dentist’s ex-wife. It seems like an easy score, and he’s scoped out the lady’s apartment building and her habits, so he feels confident. But when she returns before he has left, he slips into the closet only to be locked into it by the resident. When he hears an altercation and realizes something is very wrong, he works his way out of the closet and finds the body of the lady of the house. What he does NOT find, is the attaché case (filled with the lady’s jewelry) which he’d left outside the closet. What the hell?

There are plenty of suspects, including the World’s Greatest Dentist, but Bernie really needs to solve the case before the police turn on him as the most likely suspect.

The detectives assigned to the case seem easy to fool, but beat cop Ray Kirschmann is harder to shake. Bernie gets some help from a lovely dental hygienist with divided loyalties. Could there be a romantic relationship in Bernie and Jillian’s future?

Gosh but I love Bernie! He’s a gentleman burglar and has standards and ethics. I cannot help but picture Cary Grant; IMHO, he would have been perfect as Bernie.

I finished reading for the first time the American Literature classic, The Scarlet Letter. Despite it having been written in 1850, its language and style is easily readable. The book is sn examination of the ramifications of guilt, openly professed, or kept hidden as well as the poison of revenge.

I always start "The Handmaid's Tale" at almost the same time of the year. Then, stop at the same story line. This spot in the book takes my breath away. You have inspired me. When I have time, I will restart it and finish it.

I finished reading South Sea Tales by Robert Louis Stevenson. In a short story of barely over 100 pages, Stevenson finds time to quote both Latin and German poetry, as well as English. I am unfamiliar with the poem by Heinrich Heine that he quoted. It is not in my anthology. As for Virgil, I have forgotten most of the Latin I ever learned. Actually, I found this book inspiring in that regard; I wish I had a pocket Virgil to plod through. Although I found the ending of The Ebb-Tide really strange, I'm glad I read it.

Still reading George III: a Personal History by Christopher Hibbet. I'm enjoying it, but he uses too many pronouns; sometimes I read a paragraph several times, and I still can't figure out which antecedent he's referring to.

I started Marco Polo over again after receiving a decent copy (Everyman Classics) in the mail.

I also read the first short story in Just After Sunset by Stephen King and it was just right for the season.

The new thread is up over here.