What I'm Reading This Week (December 4, 2023)

 As we approach the end of the year, I'm beginning this first week of December with a declining energy level. I am starting to find myself more and more content simply to watch something good on one of the video channels I subscribe to instead of concentrating on the pages of a good book. That's not like me generally, but it's not completely unusual either; it's happened before, and I've managed to shake it off fairly quickly. Something to do with the closing of yet another year, I suspect.

Anyway...I did finish a couple of books this week, Pearl, which I reviewed last Friday, and Benjamin Hall's Saved: A War Reporter's Mission to Make It Home, which I will be reviewing one day this week. I also continued to read from The Raging Storm by Ann Cleeves and This Other Eden by Paul Harding. I remain stalled, however, on next year's The Blues Brothers and didn't make a lot of progress on the fourth Thursday Murder Club Mystery, Richard Osman's The Last Devil to Die. Even so, I perhaps foolishly convinced myself to add a new book to those already in progress, and I find myself quite satisfied with what I read in the first chapter of Not Dead Enough by Phillip Thompson.

Not Dead Enough is being officially published today, if I recall correctly. It is the third book in a series featuring Iraq War veteran Colt Harper who has returned to Mississippi to become a county sheriff. Colt firmly believes that he shares a lifetime bond with his fellow combat veterans, but after one of them seems to be directly involved with the dead body discovered one morning in a remote part of Colt's county, he knows that that bond is about to be stretched right up to, if not beyond, its breaking point.

The Lauren Groff book I mentioned last week, The Vaster Wilds, came in late, so I'll be picking it up on Tuesday along with a scifi novel by Connie Willis called The Road to Roswell. I see, too, that I'm finally about to get my turn at Ann Patchett's Tom Lake after placing it on hold way back in July, so I'm kind of excited about receiving that one in a few days. I started to buy a copy several times, but decided to play the long game with my library out of sheer stubbornness (why is "stubbornness" so hard for me to spell all of a sudden).

I'll also be picking up The Road to Roswell. I've heard good things about Connie Willis's science fiction for a long time, but haven't read any of the books. She has won both Nebula and Hugo awards in the past and has quite a following among scifi readers who enjoy their science fiction on the more humorous and lighter side. This one is about a woman who is a little embarrassed to be going to Roswell, New Mexico, to attend the alien-themed wedding of a friend. But then she's abducted by one of the little guys herself, and finds herself teaming up with "him" in a bit of a quest. Could be fun.

You know, I think I'm ready for a bit more escape/comfort reading. I'm starting to think that the Booker List project I've been on has resulted in so much dark reading that I desperately need a change of pace to kickstart me again. Maybe some of these will do the trick. 

Here's hoping everyone has a good week ahead of them. Enjoy.