What I'm Reading This Week (February 26, 2024)

 

I finished three books last week, but the real highlight of the week for me was the way a fourth one so unexpectedly absorbed almost all the reading time I had left over. Finished up were Study for Obedience, The Blues Brothers, and American Spirits, three books with very little in common, and the one that grabbed me and wouldn't let go was Deanna Raybourn's Killers of a Certain Age.

I'm about seventy-five percent through Killers of a Certain Age now, so that one will almost definitely be finished up in the next couple of days. In addition, I'm also nearly done with Tommy Orange's There There and well into the short story collection Nineteen Claws and a Black Bird, Hitchcock's Blondes, and the Perry Mason classic, The Case of the Empty Tin. 

And there are the ones that I've just scratched the surface of or plan/hope to start soon:

The only Michael Cunningham novel I've read is The Hours, but I was so impressed by that one that Cunningham's name on a book still grabs my attention. Day is Cunningham's latest, and although I've only read the first twenty pages or so, I'm intrigued by its premise. The novel checks in with one family on three specific days: April 5, 2019; April 5, 2020; and April 5, 2021. In effect, Day is a story about how different the family was one year prior to COVID-19 compared to how it is one year after the worst of COVID-19 is behind us. 

How to Build a Boat is one of the last two 2023 Booker Prize nominees that I'm still waiting for, and it's finally arrived at my library branch. This is an Irish coming-of-age novel about a boy with a dream that he believes will change his life forever. The boy, whose mother died when he was born, is another of those obvious outsiders who attract bullies for their entire lives. He comes to the attention of two teachers who want to help him through his troubles, but each of them have troubles of their own, so maybe before it's all over the boy will end up helping them as much as they help him.

I'm running out of library-time for The Only Good Indians, so it really needs to happen for me soon. Native American author Stephen Graham Jones is a multi-award winner, so I have high hopes that this one is better than its jacket flap makes it sound. I'm not really into "horror" anymore, so the description puts me off a bit: "Seamlessly blending classic horror and a dramatic narrative with sharp social commentary, The Only Good Indians follows four American Indian men after a disturbing event from their youth puts them in a desperate struggle for their lives. Tracked by an entity bent on retribution, these childhood friends are helpless as the culture and tradition they left behind catch up to them in a violent, vengeful way." We'll see.

Others starting to make their presence felt are these four which are all being published in the next four to fifteen weeks (shown here in order of publication):

I've freed up a little reading time by deciding to take a pass on The No. 1 Ladies' Detective Agency because I realize now that the HBO series I watched a few weeks ago is almost entirely based on this first novel in the series. The scripts greatly expand on the several mysteries cleared up by Mma Ramotswe in the book, so I already know "who did it." I've also returned Agatha Christie's The Murder of Roger Ackroyd to the library in favor of reading one of the Christie novels already sitting on my own shelves. That gives me the space to take a flyer on any wildcard that catches my eye later this week.

Happy reading, everyone...we've had genuine spring weather here for the last few days, and that means that my reading hours are shrinking in direct proportion to the rise in temperature. But that's kind of a nice problem to have for a change.