Started: 7/22/21
Finished: 7/27/21
Recommended by someone I follow on Twitter, with their guarantee that I would LOVE it. I did not love it. It was fine, it was okay, but I really didn’t like the modern day characters. I found myself hoping for a ghost and at least one murder. Meh.
Started: 6/21/21
Finished: 7/3/21
This series comes up whenever anyone is talking about supernatural detectives, and people seem to like it, so I figured I’d give it a try. I liked it, and I’ll probably give it another book or two, but the main character doesn’t have much of an internal life. He gets thrown into this supernatural world, out of nowhere, and he doesn’t seem to have much reaction to it. So maybe that will improve…? Also, he (or the series) has some sexist tendencies, so if that doesn’t get better, I’m out. The mystery and story were interesting, though.
Started: 6/8/21
Gave up: 6/11/21
Another non-fiction recommendation by Sarah Gailey. Another pass by me. I don’t think it’s the quality of recommendation so much as my own general lack of interest in non-fiction.
Started: 6/2/21
Finished: 6/8/21
The next Maisie Dobbs book. I’ve been saying this for several books now, but I’m not sure if I’m going to keep reading these. They’re easy, they’re good enough, but Maisie needs more as a character.
Started: 5/25/21
Finished: 5/29/21
Love T. Kingfisher. This is horror, just scary enough in the beginning and the middle that I refused to read it at night, but it got less scary after that. Very weird. In a good way.
Started: 4/28/21
Finished: 5/5/21
Recommended by Sarah Gailey. There’s a cult! And a missing sister! And trauma! Good, but I was disappointed by the reveal and the end. Which were both quite abrupt.
Started: 4/9/21
Finished: 4/12/21
Another Sarah Gailey recommendation, another good one. It’s a book about a fictional band in LA in the 70s, told in the style of an oral history. Very rock biography/documentary, and very real.
Started: 4/3/21
Finished: 4/9/21
Book 17 in The Dresden Files, which I have been re-reading via audiobook for the last year or so. I probably should have been listing the last several as new books for me, but I’ve been lazy about it. Anyway, I’m enjoying these books more than ever, particularly the later ones, at least partly because he really dialed back the low-key sexist descriptions of women THANK GOD.
Also, something in this latest book made me cry, and there was a bonus short story at the end that made me SOB. Jim Butcher has made me yell in annoyance, shout at unexpected events, laugh many times, but he’s never made me cry before.
Started: 3/30/21
Finished: 4/3/21
Book 4, I think, in the Maisie Dobbs series. I like the stories, but I’m over my love for them. Maisie needs friends, please! Someone she actually talks to or has fun with, not just clients and employees and sponsors/mentors. She might become more human.
Started: 3/6/21
Finished: 3/13/21
Book 3 in the Maisie Dobbs series. Any pretense that she isn’t somewhat mystical is gone, and since the pretense is gone, I feel like I can relax about it. It does remove a little of my enjoyment of the mystery aspect, though. Still great characters and good stories, so I’m in the for long haul with the series.
Started: 3/3/21
Finished: 3/6/21
I wasn’t sure, using the title as my only clue, if this was going to be about actual killing or not, and I’m not going to tell you. But I will tell you that this was really good. I have plenty of sympathy for the main character (not total, for reasons), and I both hate and understand her sister. Sort of understand. Enough to understand the main character’s actions. Anyway, it’s good. You should read it.
Started: 2/14/21
Finished: 2/16/21
Weird, kind of horror – I can’t say for sure that I liked it. There was a bit too much musing on the nature of humanity and the thin veneer of civilization. Having teenagers literally run wild, like wild, was an interesting idea, but there wasn’t enough about why the main character was different, if she was different – I’m not even clear on whether I’m supposed to think she was different! Did she just think she was different and so she acted like it? I finished it last night, and the more I think about it, the more dissatisfied I am. This isn’t the good kind of post-book musing.
Started: 2/12/21
Gave up: 2/14/21
Ugh. Retired military, super-capable, gentlemanly know-it-all has to save his town after an EMP takes out all modern amenities. I have read this book before. I have read better versions of this book. This one feels like a non-writer decided to fictionalize his What To Do In Case Of An EMP report, hoping it would get his point across better. It’s all tell, no show, and Mr. Only I Am Making The Right Decisions is going to be proven right. AND it’s the beginning of a series, so he’s probably going to end up saving the world. I’m sitting this one out.
Started: 2/8/21
Finished: 2/12/21
T. Kingfisher (Ursula Vernon when she’s writing kids’ books) is one of the guests of honor at this convention I’m (virtually) attending this weekend, so I figured I’d read her next to most recent book before then. I’ve read three before this and loved them, and I love this. I love it when I find a new favorite.
Started: 2/4/21
Finished: 2/8/21
A fiction recommendation by Sarah Gailey (still kind of obsessed). This guy writes horror. Sort of funny horror? He’s VERY good at immersing you in the setting. This is 1980s Charleston, and the 80s is very 80s, and the teenagers are very teenager-y, and the horror is mostly gross. I liked it, but only as much as I ever like horror. There’s one scene I wish I could forget.
Started: 2/3/21
Gave up: 2/4/21
Non-fiction recommendation by Sarah Gailey (I’m kind of obsessed). It’s about fungi. Why would I read (or like) this book? It’s so not me. Except, dude, the author’s name is Merlin Sheldrake. And supposedly, he’s funny in that dry British way. And there are footnotes!
Update: I was promised footnotes! There weren’t any. I must have been thinking of some other book. Also, not that funny. I cannot get excited about fungi, no matter how lyrical prose. Possibly because the lyrical prose.
I gave up.
Started: 1/22/21
Finished: 1/30/21
Book 2 of the Maisie Dobbs series. She’s still mostly perfect, but her detective work has a woo-woo element that I’m not sure I’ll like long-term. I was expecting pure investigation and deductive reasoning, with maybe some insight, but she practically has visions and gets feelings about things. I’m interested, but I’ll have to see where this goes.
Started: 1/3/21
Finished: 1/11/21
Last in the Great Library series. It ends well, but there’s a magical element that feels…not shoehorned in exactly, but maybe not as well-developed as everything else. These books have a lot going on, and I think the series could have ended without it. BUT I liked them very much, and I’m planning to read some of the author’s other stuff.
Started: 12/26/20
Finished: 12/27/20
I can’t remember where I heard about this book, but it starts out HARD. A twenty-something black woman babysits for a white family, and one night, the mother calls her unexpectedly to take the toddler out for a little bit so they can deal with an emergency at home. The babysitter tells her she’s not dressed like she normally is (she was out with friends), and the mother says that’s fine, so she takes the toddler down the street to a local expensive grocery store to just kill time. A shopper calls security on her, implying that she kidnapped the little girl, and it’s a REALLY tense scene. It turns out fine, and the rest of the book talks about the aftermath, but in a very anticlimactic way. Well, until the climax. Anyway, it’s about how all these characters see each other and how they react and think about themselves, and it’s pretty funny and enjoyable, which I did NOT expect after that scary beginning.
Started: 12/19/20
Finished: 12/25/20
Book 4 in the Great Library series. The stakes keep getting higher. No, the stakes have always been the same. The tension is ratcheting up.