What I'm Reading This Week - November 13, 2023

Despite a weekend trip to Dallas that really limited my reading time last week, I somehow managed to finish two books that I've been working on: Hanging the Devil (reviewed) and The Puzzle Master (review to follow). I also made a little progress on two very different books I mentioned last week: The Blues Brothers and When Books Went to War. 

Unfortunately, after reading about 75 pages of The Lemon Man I ended up moving it - at least for now - into the "Did Not Finish" box. The novel was just not working for me at all. It uses a first person/present tense narrator, and while that combination doesn't necessarily bother me, this time I found myself feeling too much as if I were viewing the narrator's life through a body camera strapped to his chest to enjoy it. After I found myself cringing from the number of paragraphs (especially at the beginning of chapters) that begin with words like "I saw, I went, I cross over, I lift, I hear, I wake up, I see," and the like, I quit...reading. The plot is clever enough, but this pronoun/present tense combination really wore on me.

I have to admit that I've been a little frustrated by When Books Went to War, and even moved it into the DNF file for a couple of days before deciding to give it one more chance. I'm still not very far along, but it's starting to cover more of the ground I'm most curious about regarding the books sent overseas to American servicemen during World Wars I and II, so I'm enjoying it more and making steady progress toward its conclusion. Maybe I just expected too much.

My library hold-list came through last week with a couple of books that have very short check-out windows - and four more arrive this week, so I'll largely be reading from library books this week:

The Bee Sting is on the 2023 Booker Prize shortlist, but the novel itself is anything but short. It comes in at 642 pages and with exactly one week to go before I need to return it, I've read only 358 of those pages. It is the consistently bleak story of a family that is falling apart at the seams while only its youngest member much seems to care. I really like the way the plot is constructed by dividing the story into long, distinctive sections each narrated by one of the book's main characters. The different POVs covering some of the same ground make for interesting reading.

I've so far read only one of the eight interlocking short stories that comprise If I Survive You, but I've already been pleasantly surprised by this Booker Prize nominee. Much of what I've heard about this one has been negative, so I was a little skeptical about it before reading "In Flux," a story about the youngest brother in a family of four Jamaicans who come to Miami to begin new lives. The story immediately takes on the difficulties that first generation Americans can experience in trying to be accepted by either the country of their parents origin or by the new country in which they now live. 

These four are ready for library pick-up:

The Longmire Defense is book number nineteen in Craig Johnson's Sheriff Walt Longmire series. In this one, Longmire is working a cold case that goes all the way back to the late 1940s. The old case involves the murder of a man who became the first person that Walt's father ever saw die, but no murder weapon was ever found, so the case was never solved or prosecuted. But after Walt's dog discovers the missing rifle - one that turns out to have been owned by Walt's own grandfather - Walt's sense of right and wrong will be severely tested.

t

Tim O'Brien is one of those authors I highly respect but have had only limited experience reading. The problem is that O'Brien is just not that prolific a writer; America Fantastica is, in fact, his first new novel in two decades. This is a story about a bank robber who decides to take the teller hostage when he makes his escape from the bank. As it turns out, the teller is not unhappy to remain right where she is despite all the people on their trail. The New York Times called this "one of Fall 2023's most anticipated books."

The Raging Storm is the third novel in Ann Cleeves's Inspector Matthew Venn series. The whole town is excited when a celebrity sailor/adventurer takes shelter in the town during a gale, but before they can get used to the idea of having him there the man is murdered. The murder investigation brings Venn back to the same small religious community from which he was expelled as a young man - and after a second body is discovered, things get so messy for Venn that he begins to question is own judgement.

Chicken Hill is an abandoned neighborhood where African American families once lived side-by-side with Jewish families. Then in 1972, while clearing the old neighborhood and digging foundations for new buildings, workers discover a skeleton at the bottom of an old well. Now it looks like a lot of figurative old skeletons are about to be uncovered in addition to the real one workers found. I've enjoyed McBride's work before but this one has gotten mixed reviews, so we'll see.

A couple of these have been on hold since July or August, but of course they all have to become available in the same week. And they all have a long waiting list behind me, so once again I'm limited to a 14-day checkout period. This is not exactly what I thought I'd be reading this week, but here they come. 

How does your own upcoming week look?