What I'm Reading This Week (October 1, 2023)

 It's hard for me to believe that it's already the first of October, but according to the title of this post, it must be true. It's a little cooler in this part of the country now, but we are still topping out at somewhere between 93 and 95 degrees every day, and we've had less than two total inches of rain since July 4. Let's just say it doesn't feel as if the seasons have changed even a little. 

I did finish three of the books I started last week with, and I managed to post reviews of all three: Half-Life of a Stolen Sister, Wifedom, and Don't Tell Anybody the Secrets I Told You. I think that's the first time all year long that I've read three books in a row authored by women - something I used to do fairly frequently - and two more of the three I'm carrying in to this week are also written by females: The Heron's Cry by Anne Cleeves and Rabbit Hole by Kate Brody.

The Heron's Cry, a 2021 book by Ann Cleeves, is the author's second novel in her "Two Rivers" series featuring Detective Matthew Venn. I've owned a copy for over a year, but it took the recent publication of the third series book to finally get me to pick this one up. I'm not taking to the Venn character as quickly as I did to Vera, or my favorite of them all, Jimmy Perez, so I haven't felt a great urgency to read it. But I'm over halfway through it right now, and Matthew Venn is finally starting to grown on me, I think.

Rabbit Hole by Kate Brody has both feet firmly planted in contemporary culture. It's the story of a young woman whose older sister disappeared several years earlier after attending a party with high school friends. Now their father has killed himself and the woman feels guilty about not sharing everything she knew during the initial investigation of her sister's disappearance. After she starts using the internet to begin her own investigation, things go off the rails and the only person she can trust is a true crime fanatic a decade younger than her.

For Between Them, Richard Ford takes the unusual approach of sharing his memories of his parents in two entirely separate sections, the first devoted to his father, the second to his mother. The two sections were written thirty years apart. As Ford puts it, "I was one person raised by two very different people.." I love this from Ford, too, "...entering the past is a precarious business, since the past strives but always half-fails to make us who we are." As with everything else I've read by Ford, I'm finding his prose to flow very smoothly for me.

Last Day on Earth is a compilation of short stories from Eric Puchner. I haven't started reading the stories yet, but at first glance they seem to share the theme of difficult coming-of-age experiences. For instance, one boy fears his mother might really be a robot, another is desperate to keep his mother from putting his father's favorite dogs "to sleep," and one story is about a world in which parents no longer have that role. This 2017 book will be my first experience with Eric Puchner's writing.

I hope to finish at least three of these during the week, so I'll likely be starting others along the way. The most likely ones to be chosen are ones I've mentioned before like Harbor Lights, the James Lee Burke short story collection; The Lemon Man, an Australian crime novel by Keith Bruton; and Peter Skinner's coming-of-age novel Full Beaver Moon. I'm also considering a copy of Stephen King's Holly which was sent to me by someone wondering how I would react to what is said by many to be King's least disguised political rant to date. I'm not sure that I can get through it if what I've read about it is true, but I'm really curious to see if King may have jumped the shark (he has come dangerously close to doing that before) with this one, so we'll see. Maybe what I've read and been told about the novel is wrong.

Have a great reading week, y'all. Can't wait to talk with everyone during the week ahead.