What I'm Reading This Week (August 14)

 Last week worked out pretty well for me mainly because the library didn’t notify me to come in and pick up any held books. That's about to change this week, however, because I got an email yesterday saying that five books are now being held and another is "in transit." At least two of those have long lines behind me, so they will have to be given top priority when I pick them up on Wednesday (on the way home from a dreaded dental appointment).

Looking back, I see that I finished three of the six books I began the week with, abandoned another, and am still reading the other two. So this is what's planned for the week ahead:

I started this one mid-week and I'm about 200 pages into it now. It's Deborah Crombie's nineteenth Duncan Kincaid/Gemma James novel, and I'm really getting into the story now. A Killing of Innocents is about a young doctor who is knifed to death while walking across London's Russell Square at the end of a rainy day. The victim is dead before she hits the ground but only one little boy actually saw the murder take place. What is feared to be a random killing turns out to be something very different.

I love the writing of Paulette Jiles, but I was having a little trouble warming up to her soon-to-be published novel Chenneville until near its midpoint. Then something clicked for me, and now I find myself racing through the second half of this story about a man seeking vengeance for the murder of several members of his family. I had to chuckle this morning when I found that one of the most despicable characters in the book happens to share my very own surname. Jiles is a Texas writer so I wonder if she's familiar with the little town not too terribly far from where she lives that goes by the same name. It's not a common name, so I'd love to ask her about it one day. 

Sandra Dallas writes wonderful historical fiction about the American northwest, and Where Coyotes Howl is another good one. It tells the story of a young school teacher who takes a job offer in a tiny Wyoming community in 1916. She almost immediately catches the eye of a young cowboy there and barely finishes the school year before she finds herself married and living own a small ranch in the middle of nowhere. Now she has to adapt to an entirely new and unexpected lifestyle if she is to survive.

Believe it or not, the cover of Satan Is Real is pretty much a copy of a gospel music album released by The Louvin Brothers in 1959. It is actually the biography of the brothers written by Charlie Louvin and Benjamin Whitmer in 2012. I've been meaning to read this one for several years but have just now gotten around to it. It's one of those memoirs that was probably pulled together from taped interviews and thoughts of the author, and it reads that way. Some of the language used in the narrative is almost shocking based on the standards of 2023 even though this book is only eleven years old. Even so, I am finding that it makes for a fascinating read.

Covid-19 was a piece of cake compared to the Shark Flu that springs from Iceland's melting permafrost one October. By December everything around the world has stopped, and the lucky survivors are just trying to hang on. As one character puts it, "it is no longer relevant whether the application of twenty-first century medical science was the equal of the virus because we no longer lived in the twenty-first century." The flu spreads so quickly because no one is willing to suffer the restrictions experienced during the first two years of the covid pandemic again so soon...so they refuse to play the game. 

I haven't started this one yet, so I'll rely on the jacket for some information. Robie is the only passenger on a cargo flight; she's acquainted with the pilot but does not know anything about the co-pilot. When the plane suffers engine failure, Robie finds herself fighting for her life in the water until the co-pilot pulls her onto a life raft. They have no water, and their only food is a single bag of Skittles candy. There is an island ahead but no one knows where they are..."and that's when the real terror begins."

I'm hoping for another good reading week, and I'm pleased with all of the ones I’ve mentioned, plus the ones I'll be picking up in a couple of days. That doesn't even account for the stack that's already lined up behind this bunch, so it’s time to get started. 

The Book Chase January 2022 Reading Plan

Happy New Year, all. It's always refreshing to turn the page on a new year, I know, but after the last two years we've all experienced, it somehow seems more important than ever to start this new year with a real sense of renewal and optimism. That's also led me to reconsider what kind of reading year I want to have in 2022. 

I've decided that 2022 will be a year during which I read many more older books than I normally read. I want to spend the year catching up on some of my longtime favorite authors and exploring books and authors from the middle of the twentieth century. That means fewer new books, fewer review copies, and way less chasing the bright new pennies as publishers around the world mint them every month. That's not to say that I won't be reading any books published this year; I'll just have to force myself to be more selective...and I'll depend on you guys to point me in the right direction there.

Anyway, that's the plan for now, and January is looking something, I hope, like this:

This is the second book (1993) in Michael Connelly's Harry Bosch series. This is my favorite detective series of them all, and I started off 2021 by reading the first book in the series but never did work my way back to this second one. Interestingly, this is the novel in which Bosch discovers who his father was and that he has four half-siblings, including the character who later becomes well known to Connelly fans as the "Lincoln Lawyer." This one takes Bosch down into Mexico where he tries to solve the murders of two detectives.

Thomas Berger's 1964 novel, Little Big Man, is a classic of sorts. It was made into a successful movie in 1970 that starred Dustin Hoffman, but that movie struck me as much as an anti-Vietnam war movie as a good representation of Berger's long novel about a man who was captured by Indians as a child and spent the rest of his life passing between the two cultures. Jack Crabb, now 111 years old, is finally ready to tell the world his story when he suddenly dies...leaving behind his diaries. The novel is told in his words...and it's a hoot.

I committed to reading this one a few weeks ago. It's the third in a series of stories published by the Mystery Writers of America, and it is scheduled for publication in April 2022. I've read a few of the short stories in it now, and I was a little bit underwhelmed by the first ones I read. But I seem to have struck gold with the last few of them I've tried, so my appreciation for the collection is steadily growing. I'm unfamiliar with most of the authors, but that's part of the fun because you never know where just one story will lead you.

The Searchers is a 1954 novel by Alan LeMay that many people will remember as one of John Wayne's classic movies. From what I understand, the novel is a good bit darker than the movie was - and that was dark enough. It's the story of a man whose niece (I think) is taken captive by Indians, and what he goes through to get her back over the next six years. The darker aspects of the story come, as I recall, from the man's realization that he would rather see the young woman dead than alive if she has been raped by the Indians who hold her for so long. 

I've been itching for a while now to begin reading the Shetland series by Ann Cleeves but still haven't managed to get a copy of the first book in the series. Rather than wait any longer, I've decided to jump into the series featuring Shetland cop Jimmy Perez with its seventh book, Cold Earth (2016). It's not like I don't already know the characters anyway, since I first discovered the Shetland series via the PBS series and have watched three complete seasons of those shows. Still, though, that's not like reading the books.

After finally discovering Peter Robinson's Inspector Banks novels and reading the current ones for a while, I decided a while back to start reading from book number one in this twenty-seven-book series. So, it's time for book number six, Wednesday's Child (1992). Unfortunately, I saw a television version of this one a year or so ago, and the plot stuck with me more vividly than television usually does. I don't expect any real surprises now, but I do expect some complications and, hopefully, a side plot or two.

William Shaw is one of those authors that Cathy over at Kittling: Books turned me on to in 2021. I really enjoy the way this man tells a story, and this will be the fifth of his books I've read. It's one of Shaw's standalones, and it was published in 2014. Like his She's Leaving Home, another of his standalones, it is set in the "swinging sixties." It is billed on the book flap as "a battle for the soul of the city" (London) between "cops and criminals, the corrupt and the corruptible." It sounds as if the cops are little better than the criminals in this one.

This book has been languishing on my shelves since sometime in the eighties, I think. It's bright red cover catches my eye all the time, but I've not read even one of the four Paul Scott novels inside its covers. Time to fix that, so I hope to read Scott's 1976 novel The Jewel in the Crown in late January or early February. I did see, decades ago, some of the television series based on the books, so I know what to expect. The four novels total almost 2,000 pages in this edition, Now I remember why I never tried to read one of them before now. 

This is the game plan for the beginning of the month. I don't expect to read all eight of these, but I do expect to read about ten books in total following the general guidelines I've set for myself. 

And...we're off. Happy 2022 reading to you all!