What Fiction are you reading this week, December 31, 2023?

[hermetic]

Goodbye, adios, adieu, sayonara 2023

So long, and thanks for all the books

Reading With No One As Witness by Elizabeth George.
"The police never suspected a serial killer was at large until they found the fourth murdered boy--the first white victim--his body draped over a tomb in a London graveyard. Suddenly a series of crimes and a potential public relations disaster have Scotland Yard on the defensive, scrambling to apprehend a maniac while avoiding accusations of racism." Good story. At 630 pages this will see me well on the way into 2024.

I just read Sleeping Beauties Part 1 of the graphic novel. This is certainly an intriguing tale, and pretty gruesome. The art work is odd at times but adds to the story's weirdness. The pictures of animals, though, can be quite stunning. I'm glad I decided to read this instead of King's 720-page novel.

Listening to The Last Devil to Die By Richard Osman, #4 in the Thursday Murder Club series.
"It's rarely a quiet day for the Thursday Murder Club. Shocking news reaches them -- an old friend has been killed, and a dangerous package he was protecting has gone missing."

What books will you be reading on your trek into 2024?

Happy New Year!! Stay safe out there.

[niyad]

1. "The Art of French Murder" by Colleen Cambridge. Paris, 1949. Julia Child

and her friend Tabitha Knight solve several brutal murders. .one of which was done by one of Julia's own knives! A wonderful look at post-war Paris, and Julia before she became the French Chef.

The cover of the book is basically the same as Julia's landmark book.

[hermetic]

2. Nice!

“Enchanting…Cambridge captures Child's distinct voice and energy so perfectly. Expect to leave this vacation hoping for a return trip.” �"Publishers Weekly

[albacore]

3. "Resurrection Walk" by Michael Connelly....&..."Nordic visions : the best of Nordic speculative fiction"

[hermetic]

5. I am on

a very long waiting list for the Connelly book.

[cbabe]

13. Resurrection Walk:

I found it thin and predictable. As if publishers were hurrying the book into print. Could’ve used a few more draft rewrites.

A let down from The Lincoln Lawyer.

[Easterncedar]

4. My Good Man

Eric Gansworth, native author from Niagara Falls. Brilliant

[hermetic]

6. An author to check out...

A literary tour-de-force sure to turn the coming-of-age genre on its head.

Lots of awards and 5-star reviews for several of his books.

[Easterncedar]

9. The Book Corner in Niagara Falls

It’s a great place. The owner. Jeff, will find and ship your books if you can’t visit in person. The store is enormous. Lots of used books as well as new. Jeff introduced me to Gansworth’s writing. He’s quietly a force for good in the world.

[ExWhoDoesntCare]

20. Read his Give Me Some Truth

Last year. I don't read much YA, but that one stood out for how well he develops his characters and the world they live in. I could 'see' everyone and where they were, quite clearly.

[Easterncedar]

21. It felt very true to me

How did you happen by it?

[ExWhoDoesntCare]

22. I had a reading challenge prompt

For a Native American YA book. The title got my attention because it made the John Lennon song spring into my head, instantly. Had to read it, then, LOL.

[rsdsharp]

7. I'm rereading Time to Hunt by Stephen Hunter

Hunter is the former Pulitzer Prize winning film critic for the Washington Post. Although he has written some freestanding novels, most of his novels involve the Swaggers.

His best known character is Bob Lee Swagger, a former US Marine sniper in Vietnam. Other members of the family are his father Earl, an ex-marine who won the Medal of Honor on Iwo Jima, and spent the last ten years of his life as a highway patrolman in Arkansas, and his grandfather Charles, a sheriff in Arkansas. A couple of books revolve around Ray Cruz, Bob Lee’s son.

Time to Hunt is the third Bob Lee Swagger novel, and is largely the origin story of “Bob the Nailer.” Next month Front Sight will be released — a collection of three novellas; one for each of the Swaggers.

[hermetic]

8. Hunter has written a lot of books

I found 28. Popular.

[viva la]

10. Still on my 19th C kick-- Thomas Hardy.

I'm really just reading it to fill in my education. Not super-enjoying him.

[ExWhoDoesntCare]

23. Hardy can be quite challenging

Everything is so bloody dreary with him, plus he's super-heavy on description, and light on the number of words he'll devote to plot.

When a professor said he was considering a Hardy book for a British lit class I took, I told him not to bother, I could sum up every Hardy book in less than 50 words. He laughed and told me to back that up.

'Some rural people meet, don't act like proper Victorians, fate yanks them around, and everyone ends up miserable or dead at the end--while buried amongst 250,000 words of description and about 5000 of plot.'

And that is essentially every Hardy book ever written, in a nutshell.

[viva la]

24. I think it's interesting how both he and the very different Trollope often have women protagonists

Trollope's mother was a powerful person (a best-selling author herself!), and I wonder if that's why he has so many women characters who are strong and also interesting (not just victims!).

So far Hardy seems sympathetic to his women characters while he as you say, yanks them around and kicks them.

[ExWhoDoesntCare]

25. He did write some strong women

Because he married one--a genuine suffragist, even though the marriage was not a happy one. After she died, he blamed himself for how unhappy he made her, even though she was often cruel to him about how she felt that she had married beneath her station--which she said aloud to anyone who cared to hear. And yet he still felt so much remorse that it resulted in some of his most memorable poetry.

But all of Hardy's life was on the difficult side. Despite being quite intelligent, he came from a family of limited means, so his education would be equally limited. Like the protagonist in Jude the Obscure, he worked on architecture projects, not writing, after leaving school. Some of his unhappiness with that found its way into the novel. And then his infelicitous marriage provided the bulk of material for his later work, both in novels, but especially his poetry.

I've always considered Hardy a better poet than novelist, because the strictures of poetry reined in his tendency in longer works to get carried away. A good deal of his poetry is sad, even heartbreaking, but nearly all of it is quite insightful and beautifully phrased.

[ExWhoDoesntCare]

26. Oh--and even his pet dog was mean, LOL

Hardy couldn't catch a break.

[viva la]

27. A mean pet dog--

He really couldn't catch a break!

[COL Mustard]

11. "The Art of the Deal" By Donald J. Trump

[hermetic]

12. Not in favor of book burning

But for that one I would make an exception.

[cbabe]

14. With No One As Witness by Elizabeth George

Super book. Dense. Plot, characters, prose. One of her best.

Reread Stanford/Dark Angel, a Letty Davenport novel.

Enjoyed small details and nuances second time around. Letty not as annoying but still two dimensional unlike say Virgil or even Frankie.

A good evening’s entertainment.

[mentalsolstice]

15. Lots of interesting titles listed here this week to add the my WTR list!

I’ve had a busy reading week. It’s just my husband and I, so our holidays are quiet….football games and books.

This week I finished The Midwife of Auschwitz by Anna Stuart. I had no idea so many babies were born in the camps! It was a sad, horrifying and joyful book all in one.

Next up was Maame by Jessica George. A pretty good debut novel about coming of age.

Now I’m reading Absolution by Alice McDermott. I’ll read or watch anything about Vietnam that I can get my hands on.

Happy New Year to all and wishing y’all good reading in 2024!

[yellowdogintexas]

16. I have been quite busy so am winding up the year with Baby Ganesh

Normally I get through one of these in a couple of days, but baking and Christmas movies have cut into my reading time.

I am having an early New Year's Eve dinner with some friends, so may finish it up tonight. I will definitely be home before 9 since our restaurant will close at 9.

Tomorrow I will set up my reading challenge with Goodreads.

[ExWhoDoesntCare]

28. Oooooh!

I just realized I have the first of these on my TBR list. Had a summer prompt for 'Indian author' and that seemed like a departure from the usual type of book about India. Plenty of brilliant writers and great books about it, but most tend to be on the heavy side. Summer isn't really the time for that, so a mystery seemed like just the thing to tick the box.

[japple]

17. Happy New Year Fiction Group. Thank you, hermetic, for hosting this weekly

thread for us.

I'm still reading Paulette Jiles's latest, Chenneville and it is proving to be one of her best, I think. What an adventure!

[mentalsolstice]

18. I have added "Chenneville" to my WTR list.

Japple, you always have great recommendations! And like you, I clap on Sundays when hermetic asks what we’re reading!

[ExWhoDoesntCare]

19. I'm starting the new year by reading

The book that has been on my TBR pile the longest: The Moonstone by Wilkie Collins. Victorian novels and I don't tend to mix well, so I expect it to be a long grind. That's why I'll read a bit of it day-to-day and at the same time tackle other books on my TBR list:

I set a goal for myself this year to read all 30+ Roderick Alleyn books by Ngaio Marsh. The first is A Man Lay Dead. My mum was a huge fan of the Marsh books, so we'll have something to talk about rather than what a disappointment I've been to her. That'll be a refreshing change.

My other series to read is the Lord Peter Wimsey series by Dorothy Sayers. The first is the novella Whose Body? I watched the BBC versions of the series ages ago, and can't wait to see how the novels compare.

Both of those books are fairly short, so I should be able to get to the latest Pentecost and Parker mystery, Murder Crosses Her Mind, by Stephen Spotswood. I have an online event to attend with the author next week. I'm hoping I'll extract enough from reading the book to ask something intelligent at the event.

If I have time, I"ll get to Paul Yoon's Run Me to Earth. This is my diversity literary fic pick of the week, a saga about three orphaned children who get separated after being motorcycle couriers during the civil war in Laos.