What have you read recently?

RetireeRobert said:
Author C. J. Box, Joe Pickett series. Modern day westerns about a Wyoming game warden, his family, his multiple times married mother-in-law Missy, and his somewhat sketchy some-time "I've got your back" friend Nate Romanowski master falconer. I think Box is now up to 20 Joe Pickett novels with 21 due out next month or so. Read almost all of them so far, and everyone has been a page-turner. Plus lots of geography lessons and vivid scenery descriptions of Wyoming.
Click to expand...


I loved this series. Such fun. ‘Things are about to get western’. [emoji4]
 
MuirWannabe. Box has also written five or so in a new series about private detective Cassie Dewell. Just picked up four of them. Will soon get into that series. Box (or his publisher) called them the "Highway Quartet" at first but now there are five!
 
I just finished Louise Penny's latest Gamache mystery titled "All the Devils are Here". It was excellent. Unlike all of the previous Gamache mysteries, this one is not set in Quebec. Rather, it's set in Paris. She got all of the little details about Paris correct.

I also read and enjoyed "The Sweetness at the Bottom of the Pie" by Alan Bradley. The book is set in a small town in England in 1950, and the sleuth is a smart-ass and very clever chemistry-obsessed 11 year old girl name Flavia de Luce. After I finished the book, I was surprised to read that the first-time author is Canadian, not English, and was written when he was about 70 years old. There is also an interesting connection to Louise Penny.
 
I read Hidden Valley Road, a nonfiction book about a Colorado family with 12 children, 6 of whom were diagnosed with Schizophrenia. Their family was the basis of much research on the disease. It’s a tragic, but fascinating book.

https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/50088631
 
Currently reading The Last Libertines by Benedetta Craveri which is about the lives of 7 youthful aristocrats prior to and during the French Revolution.
 
Scott Turow's Testimony:

https://www.nytimes.com/2017/05/16/books/review/testimony-scott-turow.html

The Bosnian war and its aftermath is an excellent period in which to set a legal thriller because, more than 20 years after the end of that messy conflict, it is still unclear exactly who was responsible for doing what to whom. The war remains one of the bloodiest whodunits of 21st-century international relations.

The breakup of Yugoslavia, and the declaration of independence by the Republic of Bosnia and Herzegovina in 1992, sparked interethnic carnage in which Bosnian Serbs, Croats and Muslims butchered one another and were murdered with a brutality and complexity that horrified and baffled the outside world in equal measure. At least 100,000 people were killed, many by systematic “ethnic cleansing.”
Click to expand...

Having first been to/through Tito's Yugoslavia in 1963, then through by train in the opposite direction in 1965, by rented car in the late 1980s....plus subsequent visits.....and encountering numerous Roma, (especially in Sighișoara, Romania), I found the book quite enthralling.
 
Last edited:
The Hobbit on my Retirement kindle i received. Hadn't read since high school, So what better way then to go back in time...
 
I'm rereading the All Creatures Great and Small book series while watching the new Masterpiece Theater production under that title.
 
I’m now reading The Four Winds by Kristin Hannah. It’s about a family during the dust bowl. So far, I like it very much. It’s one of her better books.
 
I have been working my way steadily through two authors works

- Ann Cleeves
- Peter Robinson
Both write murder mystery books.
 
History of an Economic Hitman, by John Perkins.

Quite telling of the USA/worlds economic escapades. Seems genuine.

Good luck & Best wishes...
 
A reminder that this thread is titled "What have you read recently", i.e. past tense. It's more useful when people post their thoughts about books they have finished reading.

I finished reading the recent Booker Prize winner, Shuggie Bain by Douglas Stuart. It is not an easy read. The story is not uplifting at all. It's about a young boy named Shuggie, being raised by a single alcoholic mother in 1980s Glasgow, Scotland. The mother spends most of her dole money on drink. The young boy is lonely and is likely gay. Dialogue is written in Scottish vernacular and the book uses lots of Scottish words.

I also coincidentally read another novel set in Scotland (Edinburgh) titled Friends, Lovers, Chocolate by Alexander McCall Smith. It's the 2nd book in his Isabel Dalhousie series. I enjoyed this book a lot, even more than the 1st book in the series. It's hard to categorize the series. There is investigation involved, but it's not a murder mystery. And Isabel is always confronting moral dilemmas. No Scottish glossary was needed.
 
anethum said:
I also coincidentally read another novel set in Scotland (Edinburgh) titled Friends, Lovers, Chocolate by Alexander McCall Smith. It's the 2nd book in his Isabel Dalhousie series. I enjoyed this book a lot, even more than the 1st book in the series. It's hard to categorize the series. There is investigation involved, but it's not a murder mystery. And Isabel is always confronting moral dilemmas. No Scottish glossary was needed.
Click to expand...

I have read a bunch of McCall Smith's Isabel Dalhousie series.

Lost of good settings in Edinburgh, and occasionally other locales in Scotland.

As McCall Smith by training and vocation is/was as a bioethicist in the medical community, he often sets up some nice moral dilemmas for his heroine Isabel to grapple with.

A companion series, also set in Scotland, is Smith's 44 Scotland Street series.
 
anethum said:
A reminder that this thread is titled "What have you read recently", i.e. past tense. It's more useful when people post their thoughts about books they have finished reading.
Click to expand...

Although there might be some people who have the capacity to decide whether or not they would recommend a book prior to reaching the last page. :cool:
 
Just finished The Dark Clouds Shining, the final in the Jack McColl series:

In the fourth and final installment of David Downing’s spy series, Jack McColl is sent to Soviet Russia, where the civil war is coming to an end. The Bolsheviks have won but the country is in ruins. With the hopes engendered by the revolution hanging by a thread, plots and betrayals abound.

London, 1921: Ex–Secret Service spy Jack McColl is in prison serving time for assaulting a cop. McColl has been embittered by the Great War; he feels betrayed by the country that had sent so many young men to die needlessly. He can’t stomach spying for the British Empire anymore. He’s also heartbroken. The love of his life, radical journalist Caitlin Hanley, parted ways with him three years earlier so she could offer her services to the Communist revolution in Moscow.

Then his former Secret Service boss offers McColl the chance to escape his jail sentence if he takes a dangerous and unofficial assignment in Russia, where McColl is already a wanted man. He would be spying on other spies, sniffing out the truth about MI5 meddling in a high-profile assassination plot. The target is someone McColl cares about and respects. The MI5 agent involved is someone he loathes. With the knowledge that he may be walking into a death trap, McColl sets out for Moscow,
Click to expand...
 
Bitcoin: Hard Money You Can’t F*ck With by Jason Williams

Enjoyed this and certainly an easy listen. Could be because it reinforces my BTC view [emoji57]
 
East of Eden.

I have been reading the classics recently and I have had this book for a while but have been putting it off. Once I started I couldn't put it down. . All I can say is, "wow" If you haven't read it, give it a shot - its worth it. I cant stop thinking about it.
 
Just finished Amber Ruffins book about “funny” racist stuff that happens to her sister: https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/54817546-you-ll-never-believe-what-happened-to-lacey. Kind of a behind the curtain look at how institutionalized racism affects someone.

Reading The Plague by Camus. It’s about, you guessed it, a plague.

Also wading through Sapiens, a history of Homo Sapiens (us). Feels like I’m in a graduate level course.
 
I am currently reading How To Retire Happy, Wild and Free, by Ernie Zelinski. Instead of talking numbers, it explains how to get prepared for retirement from a mental aspect. Something we don't put much focus on until we are already there. Interesting read.

BTW, found it at sellbackyourbook.com. Good deals there
 
Recently finished Recursion by Blake Crouch. Scifi/ mystery type book - I think the author might have come to my attention from the Suggest Me A Book sub on Reddit (an excellent source for reading ideas). I liked that it was an intelligent read that was still fast-moving and engaging. Likable but still human main characters, thought provoking premise.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.

Similar threads

The Cosmic Avenger
  • Poll
Poll:Crisp new bills
2 3
Replies
58
Views
2K
TheWizard
T
A
Laguna Woods Village, CA or Leisure World (Seal Beach) Anyone?
Replies
4
Views
519
Jimonlimon
J
Janet H
  • Sticky
Forums 101 - posting, accounts, basics (revised for 2024)
Replies
22
Views
145
Janet H
Janet H
Ready-4-ER-at-14
  • Poll
Poll about do you like to dance? men vs ladies
2
Replies
42
Views
1K
mickeyd
mickeyd
audreyh1
Treasury Bills, Notes, and Bonds Discussion 2024+
6 7 8
Replies
182
Views
20K
audreyh1
audreyh1

Latest posts

Back
Top Bottom