What Fiction are you reading this week, February 19, 2023?

[hermetic]

Have a happy President's Day


Reading A World of Curiosities by Louise Penny, published last November. I was on a long waiting list for this and was quite pleasantly surprised to get an email saying it was at the library waiting for me. I started reading it Friday night and it is so excellent that I did not want to put it down and I'm already halfway through the 400 pages. Now I understand why I got it so quickly. Readers are devouring it in just a few days time. Over 3,000 reviews can already be found on Good Reads. I was a little confused at the beginning but then the pieces all started falling into place and I was totally astounded by the brilliance of the story and the writing and how the events were affecting me. And I can't really tell you anything about it because I don't want to spoil any of the surprises.

Listening to The Old Man by Thomas Perry, a suspense thriller from 2017. Dan Chase, a sixty-year-old widower, must reawaken his survival instincts to contend with the history he has spent his adult life trying to escape. Armed mercenaries, spectacularly crashed cars, a precarious love interest, and an unforgettable chase scene are keeping readers glued to their seats. A very popular novel.

What fiction is keeping you glued to your seat this week?

[winetourdriver01]

1. Good Read

I started reading Kim by Kipling yesterday. Of course I read it when I was a kid, but it's just as exotic and fascinating today as it was then.

[Easterncedar]

9. Loved Kim

[SheltieLover]

2. The Cat, the Mill and the Murder, Leanna Sweeney the first of the Cats in Trouble cozy series.

Great read!

My kind of book! The book begins with a team of 3 people going into an abandoned fabric mill in rural SC, near Greenville, to rescue a clowder of feral cats! 😁

Of course, a mystery ensues...

Other great reads over the past few days:

Tuesday's Child, Fern Michaels. Exemplary page turner!

Secrets, Fern Michaels. Another non-Sisterhood, but great read!

The Messy Lives of Book People, Phaedra Patrick. Excellent read!

The Last Chance Library, Freya Sampson.

Oooh, A World of Curiosities sounds delicious. Lol

Ty for sharing, and for the thread!

[SheltieLover]

3. #304 in line for A World of Curiosities.

62 copies of ebook.

[hermetic]

5. My jaw has dropped so many times

reading this book, it may have become unhinged.

[SheltieLover]

6. Hahaha!

Sounds great!

Ty for sharing!

I'm sure I'll be postimg about it soon enough.

[hermetic]

4. Truly a classic

from 1901.

This was supposed to be a reply to the first response, about Kim. Computer be messing with me....

[cbabe]

7. We All Fall Down: Daniel Kalla

Bubonic plague outbreak in Italy. 2017 or so.

Author is an ER doctor. Predictable medical thriller. Not literature.

Good for an evening’s entertainment.

Feel sorry for plague fiction writers right before covid.

[hermetic]

8. Truly

I was just reading reviews of this book from 2019 and thinking how truth is sometimes stranger than fiction. It was only less than a year later when, on January 19, 2020, a 35-year-old man walked into a clinic in Snohomish County, Washington, complaining of a cough and fever. He described his symptoms to the medical staff — and then he told them he’d recently returned from Wuhan, China.

[RSherman]

10. Reading 3 books

Listening to the Dutch House, narrated by Tom Hanks

Reading The Wife of Bath

Reading The Personal Librarian for book group

It's funny how things coincide. At Beer & Bible, we have been discussing Paul and his writings about women, roles they should/should not take, his views on marriage, etc. This is ALL discussed in The Wife of Bath. Also, the Bath and Librarian books discuss some of the same women's issues. It's been interesting!

[hermetic]

11. Sounds interesting

I always enjoy finding similarities when what I am reading turns up in the plot of a book I am listening to. It happens frequently.

[RSherman]

18. The Plot

Speaking of "the plot", I was able to attend a poetry festival in Sharon Springs, NY. There was a small dinner and my friend and I sat right next to Joyce Carol Oates, Paul Muldoon, and his wife Jean Hanff Korelitz! During the dinner, each stood and read small portions of their writings. Jean wrote a book during the pandemic called The Plot. Our librarian ordered it for me. It's going to be an HBO movie starring Mahershala Ali. Have you heard of/read it?

[hermetic]

20. Oh, Hi

Sorry. Didn't see your post until just now. And no, I never heard of it. BUT, Fiction Database has. https://www.fictiondb.com/title/the-plot~jean-hanff-korelitz~2772559.htm

"Hailed as "breathtakingly suspenseful," Jean Hanff Korelitz's The Plot is a propulsive read about a story too good not to steal, and the writer who steals it." Will definitely keep an eye out for it. Pretty impressive to be picked up for a movie right away.

[joshdawg]

12. Just started "Flood Tide" by Clive Cussler.

Have to say this:
The beginning of the book has an old worn out cargo ship battling waves in a big storm........and losing.
The description of its struggles reminded me of the most exciting time I had when I was in the Navy some....ahem....years ago. My destroyer was caught in a typhoon on the way back from Japan. I can only describe it as a 24 hour roller coaster ride complete with the drops, the rolls, etc. And I loved every minute of it!
Yeah, people have called me a little crazy for feeling about it the way I do, but......it was definitely thrilling!

[hermetic]

13. Oh fun

Hello, sailor. New in town?

Happy to see you here. My dad was Navy. 35 years. We survived Typhoon Karen. 235 mph winds. I hear ya.

Custler is a great writer. In this book Dirk Pitt faces one of his most formidable foes -- a madman bent on killing hundreds of thousands of innocent men, women, and children with a catastrophic surge of mass destruction.

Good reading.

[yellowdogintexas]

14. readung Night Train to Berlin by Melanie Hudson

Paddington Station, present day

A young woman boards the sleeper train to Cornwall with only a beautiful emerald silk evening dress and an old, well-read diary full of sketches. Ellie Nightingale is a shy violinist who plays like her heart is broken. But when she meets fellow passenger Joe she feels like she has been given that rarest of gifts…a second chance.

Paddington Station, 1944

Beneath the shadow of the war which rages across Europe, Alex and Eliza meet by chance. She is a gutsy painter desperate to get to the frontline as a war artist and he is a wounded RAF pilot now commissioned as a war correspondent. With time slipping away they make only one promise: to meet in Berlin when this is all over. But this is a time when promises are hard to keep, and hope is all you can hold in your heart.

From a hidden Cornish cove to the blood-soaked beaches of Normandy in June 1944, this is an epic love story like no other.
I am liking this book. It kind of had a slow start but it kicked into gear fairly fast.


This week I also read Scion by Murray McDonald

Scott's life is turned upside down when he is wrongly accused of a crime. A crime which alerts a very powerful group to his very existence. An existence they believed they had extinguished twenty five years earlier. It seems his very being is a threat to them and as such, must do whatever it takes to kill him.

However, there appears to be one major flaw in their plan, Scott is not all he appears to be!

Best not have an early start in the morning, Scion is an action packed thriller that will have you up all night.

This was good. It was languishing in my Kindle (a long ago purchase) and I just happened to search my books from oldest to newest and stumbled on it. I had supposedly read it but this was not true. Now I have read it and I do recommend it.

[yellowdogintexas]

15. is this the basis for Three Pines which is streaming

currently? If so, which book is the source novel?

I loved the series.

[Staph]

17. Yes, A World of Curiosities by Louise Penny

is the latest of the Chief Inspector Armand Gamache book series, which is the basis of the Three Pines television series.

The first book in the series is Still Life. The second book, A Fatal Grace (called Dead Cold in Canada) is the basis for the first mystery in Three Pines.

I'd strongly recommend reading the books in order. These characters actually grow and change throughout the series.

[yellowdogintexas]

19. I am very OCD about reading series in order.

I hate it when I wind up in the middle of the series first.

There are a few that can stand alone.

[Polly Hennessey]

16. I am reading, Three Hours in Paris by Cara Black.

“One American riflewoman
One impossible spy mission
One shot at changing the course of history”

I wondered if this was worth my time. It seemed a little far fetched. Started it anyway and find I am liking it and Kate Rees and Occupation-era France.

“War is a political instrument, a continuation of politics by other means.”
Carl von Clausewitz
“On War”, 1832

Also, rereading, The Plague by Albert Camus.
Now I am deep in the city of Oran and rats. Oh, dear.