What I'm Reading This Week (September 25)

 I made a good dent in my reading list this week by finishing up Holmes Entangled, Whalefall, and The White Lady. I've already posted reviews to the first two, and will post The White Lady review tomorrow. I'm struggling a little bit with Half-Life of a Stolen Sister, the Brontë family book, because of the way it switches genre and even centuries in portraying the family history. It's a long book, and with just under 100 pages to go, I still haven't figured out what to think of it. I'm also about 75% of the way through Wifedom, and I hope to finish it this week. So the carry-ins are these:

And I've already added these:

Don't Tell Anybody the Secrets I Told You (I just heard her sing that phrase in a song last night but can't remember which now) is Lucinda Williams's 2023 memoir, a long overdue book in my estimation. I've been a fan of her music and writing for a long time, and even though I'm only about 20% into this one, I've already become a fan of her prose. Her family turns out to be a whole lot more interesting than I had imagined it would be, as is Lucinda's personal journey to where she is today.

Kate Brody's Rabbit Hole is scheduled to be published on the second day of 2024, so I'm not certain exactly when I'll be posting the resulting review. May be a while before that happens. I'm so intrigued by the premise though, that I couldn't wait to read it. The plot involves a young woman who becomes obsessed with solving her older sister's disappearance from a few years earlier. It delves into the mindset of people who become obsessed with true crime books, true crime podcasts, and conspiracy theories to the point that they seem to cross over the line into weirdo world.

Also, I will most likely begin one or two other books before the week is over, and these are the most likely candidates:

James Lee Burke doesn't publish many short stories these days, but this collection will be published in January 2024. I've been a fan of everything James Lee Burke for decades, and I'm pretty excited about this compilation, excited enough that there's no way I can hold off until the end of the year to read it so this may be the week it happens. The stories are set in different parts of the country very familiar to Burke and, according to the publisher, "weave together love, friendship, violence, survival, and revenge." There's a lot there to unpack.

Full Beaver Moon is coming out around Thanksgiving, and I'm kind of intrigued that its author, Peter Skinner, donates all profits on his "creative" work to charity. This one is a coming-of-age novel about an 18-year-old biracial boy who goes looking for a lost friend somewhere in the deep South. I still don't have my copy of this one ready to go because it's going to be offered at a purchase price of only $10 or so when published. That's probably silly on my part, but it's a bit of a head-scratcher for me. His previous book, however, was well covered, so this one may come up for me this week.

The Lemon Man is a 2022 crime novel that just won Australia's prestigious Ned Kelly Award for Best International Crime Novel. This is no small deal, so I want to read The Lemon Man before it's sequel is published in early 2024. Listen to this basic plot line: an Irish hitman who makes his hits from a bicycle somehow manages to get himself designated as the caretaker of a baby boy. Now he has to figure out a way to work hits into his busy domestic schedule. This one sounds like a lot of fun.

Between Them: Remembering My Parents is exactly what it sounds like. Richard Ford is among my favorite "literary writers," and I'm curious to learn more about the people who helped shape him into who he is today. This is a short memoir, but the skimming I've done of it already indicates that it is a frank and personal account of Ford's relationship with his parents, including any regrets he has about those relationships. Should be a nice change of pace for the week if I do choose this one.

This is an unusual story about a young woman who accidentally becomes the sole caretaker of her father because her mother seems to spend most her own time living far away in Ghana. But Maddie is not happy about the situation, and when her mother finally returns to London from her latest trip to Ghana, Maddie moves out to begin living a life of her own - one in which she can make friends and advance her own career. Unfortunately, it's not going to be quite that easy for her to escape into her own life.

So there you have it. That's the plan, but I'm not feeling at all well these last couple of days, and I'm hoping to see a doctor today for some relief. Depending on how all of that goes, things may go very differently from the reading plan. I can't wait to find out if that happens.