I finished three of the seven books I was reading at the beginning of last week (The Librarianist, Dickens and Prince, and Cleveland Noir), and I'm less than 100 pages from completion of both A Town Called Solace and The Secret Hours, so it was a nice week with not a clunker among them. I'm particularly pleased with one of the ones still in progress, Mick Herron's The Secret Hours, because it has really started to click with me now that I finally have its premise and all the characters figured out. I'm going to save the details for a formal review, but that one is exceptionally clever.
So this is how the reading-week is shaping up, beginning with the books already started:
This one has already joined the stack, but is not yet started:
I'm really looking forward to this 2022 novel from Loren D. Estleman. I'm a big fan of the old pulp magazines and the noir paperbacks that ended up replacing those after WWII, so this cover was screaming at me to take it home for a while. It's about a war veteran who comes home to resume his writing career only to find that the market has completely changed on him. His research for what he hopes will be a breakthrough novel leads him to a crowd that doesn't appreciate his snooping.
And these are the ones most likely to be among those added during the week:
Half-Life of a Stolen Sister is a "reimagining" of the short lives of the Brontë siblings. From the back cover: "Chapter by chapter, the novel brings together diaries, letters, home movies, television and radio interviews, deathbed monologues, and fragments from the sprawling invented worlds of the siblings' childhood..." I'm not at all sure what the reference to home movies and media interviews is all about, but there's only one way to find out. Anything about the Brontës always gets a second look from me, so I'm hopeful.
I'll probably only add two or three of these five, but the ones not added are destined for a try next week. I've been reading a couple of complicated books, especially The Secret Hours, that demand a little more concentration than most novels, so I've cut back to five books going at once instead of trying to keep up with eight of them. That seems to be working really well, so I may stay on that approach for a while.
Have a great reading week, y'all. I can't wait to hear all about it.
Only five books going at once instead of eight? You're slowing down, Sam. ;D I'm only in the middle of two books right now, a nonfiction and a fiction. But I have several more books on deck. I'm looking forward to reading The Secret Hours as soon as I've managed to read Slow Horses, but who knows how long before that happens. Happy reading this week!
ReplyDeleteYeah, slow week. :-) As for The Secret Hours, I would recommend that you read all or most of the Slough House series before tackling it. I say that because even though it can be read as a standalone (a hard one to understand, I suspect), all the fun comes from reading it as a prequel to the series and trying to figure out who all the aliases belong to in that series. When it all clicks for readers at that point, you almost laugh out loud at the cleverness.
DeleteHi Sam, so many great books on your list and Jerry Lee Lewis I don't know his music that well but I know about him and a brief scene in Walk The Line about the Life of Johnny Cash got me thinking about Jerry Lee Lewis. I sense he was conflicted all his life between his Baptist religion and music/rock and roll. And Rick Bragg knows that world and is the perfect biographer.
ReplyDeleteMost definitely conflicted, Kathy. His first cousin was the famous TV preacher Jimmy Swaggert who failed to control his own urges more times than not, too. Also, they were a cousin of country singer Mickey Gilley of Gilley's fame. So a lot going on there. I only saw him that one time in the late sixties when he could barely stand up. Memorable but not real great music.
DeleteI enjoyed Woman with a Blue Pencil a lot when I read it. I usually like books with an unusual structure, and I liked the time setting also.
ReplyDeleteI still have four of Mick Herron's books to read: Standing by the Wall (novellas), Nobody Walks, and two of the Oxford series. After that I will look into getting The Secret Hours.
You have gotten me interested in that series starting with Nobody's Fool, I will see if I can find a copy at the book sale.
I'm looking forward to Blue Pencil a lot, Tracy, hoping that it at least comes close to matching what I expect of it. You are definitely doing it right on the Herron books...so much of what is hinted at at summarized in the series is explored in detail in The Secret Hours - but everyone is in spy-mode and not using the names we know from the series. I think you'll enjoy Russo's series; I'm in the middle of the first book right now, and already looking forward to the second.
DeleteI was just a kid, but I seem to remember that JLL married his 13 year old cousin! Great Balls of Fire was one of my early 45s. Not a big fan though.
ReplyDeleteThat was the first big scandal of his career, Nan, and it really set him back to square one. I may be wrong, but I seem to remember that the story broke while he was on tour in the UK. I do like to watch video of Great Balls of Fire because of the pure energy on display, but I didn't become a real fan until Lewis reached his country honky tonk stage...probably about the time of "What Makes Milwaukee Famous." He is really a good singer when he's on his game during those years, but you could never count on him showing up. He kind of out-Jonesed ol' No-Show George Jones himself there for a while.
DeletePaperback Jack is the one that appeals to me for various reasons. I can never hear mention of the Bronte sisters without remembering that their mother was from Penzance in Cornwall like me. I've seen the blue plaque on the house she was brought up in many a time.
ReplyDeleteInteresting bit of literary trivia, Cath. The Brontës were such a tragic family that they've always fascinated me. You just have to wonder what they could have produced if they had had anything approaching an average lifespan to do it in.
DeletePaperback Jack has been a lot of fun through the first 60 pages, and I'm enjoying the literary history it's using as a plot element. WWII really changed reading tastes and publishing, all for the better, I think. Paperbacks had to be as big a shock to the system as e-books would be much later.