what are you reading?

You may have seen that the second Enola Holmes movie just came to Netflix and set a bunch of viewership records right out of the gate. I haven't watched it yet (opting out of TV in favor of ukeing these days!), but I dug the first one (2020) enough to check out the books, and they're DYNAMITE. I absolutely love 'em, and vastly prefer them to the (still quite entertaining) movies.

Enola is the 14 year-old sister of Sherlock and Mycroft (the latter of whom figures heavily in the first one, and less so as the series continues), and the first mystery she attempts to solve is the disappearance of her mother. She doesn't crack the case, but stumbles into others along the way. I will admit that I read the first four in this series of eight teen novellas by Nancy Springer, loved 'em all, then moved on to other things.

The new movie was a reminder that I need to get back to these. I just finished the fifth, The Case of the Cryptic Crinoline, and couldn't believe how much I enjoyed it! Only 188 pages, which is about how long they all are. I've mentioned that I read a lot of YA books and their emphasis on stories where stuff happens :ROFLMAO: but these aren't even that -- they're aimed at tweens and early teens, and still entertaining as all get-out.

Any fan of Sherlock, of plucky young heroines, Victorian-era mysteries, gentle historical feminism and the like will get a kick out of these. A big part of the storyline is her trying to outwit her much older brothers and their attempts to stuff her into conventional Victorian young womanhood, eg, get her into boarding school, corsets, and marriage immediately, and her determination to be the free spirit her mother the suffragette raised her to be. I especially enjoyed how they connected her upbringing to Sherlock's, with the same kinds of emphasis on curiosity, observation, a wide range of learning, and physical activity over social conformity. After all, it's not like Sherlock ever exactly fit into genteel society. Why should his sister?

That's more subtext than text, though. The books aren't exactly about that. They're about a smart, capable girl unexpectedly alone in the world, trying to find her way by helping people. I like that. Helping yourself by helping other people. AND they're fast, fun, and funny. Gotta love that. 😊 Also, there is one more book I read recently, but it has very mixed reviews. It's called Harrison Bergeron, and I needed to read it for my literature class. I read it and liked it, but half of my groupmates said that its book is not that good. But I really enjoyed reading it, and I read it very attentively because I also needed to write a paper on it. I also found this website with harrison bergeron book summary, which helped me to understand the plot and characters better, and after reading and writing, I can say that the book is worth reading. But you can also read the summery first of all to decide whether it's the right book for you to read.
I finished The Case of the Cryptic Crinoline not long time ago, and I also enjoyed reading it. I love detective stories, and even though it's a young adult series, I still enjoy reading them.
Have you heard about E. S. Gardner and his book series about Perry Mason? Love the series, I've read, and I think half of all books, and each of them is just brilliant. You never know how everything will turn out until the end
 
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I finished The Case of the Cryptic Crinoline not long time ago, and I also enjoyed reading it. I love detective stories, and even though it's a young adult series, I still enjoy reading them.
Having very much enjoyed The Sweetness at the Bottom of the Pie, I really have to try to get my hands on this one. I enjoy detective novels because I am not very much of a chess player: I just read them and enjoy them. My husband reads them, figures out who's the culprit by about a third of the way through, and then is done. I am thankful my brain doesn't work that way, so that I can fluffily read along and enjoy the whole thing :)
 
Just started reading "The Magdalene Deception" by Gary McAvoy. It's been out since 2020 but it just popped up on my Amazon Kindle recommendations. Pretty decent so far. The characters are believable although probably a little too perfect. It's the well-worn theme of a mysterious, long-hidden secret that is about to overturn the whole history of the church and the Christian faith. We'll see if it does or not...;)
 
Having very much enjoyed The Sweetness at the Bottom of the Pie, I really have to try to get my hands on this one.

Don't miss the rest of the Flavia de Luce series! Here's the series page at Penguin, noting that they're listed in reverse order (newest first). Currently 10 of them, and while there aren't any new ones planned (the author is 83, I think?), he describes Flavia as taking a break for tea and to mull the future.

That was in a 2019 interview in the Toronto Star, which is as delightful as you'd expect, and very much worth a look. He also mentions that the series has been optioned and is in development with the CBC!!! I don't know where it's at, but I would think that the success of the Enola Holmes movies on Netflix would put a little wind at Flavia's back.

I confess that I lost track of this series after book six -- not for any lack of love, as much as Life Intervening. 🤣 I couldn't be happier than to know that I have four new Flavias waiting for me! I've actually been in one of those ruts where everything I've been picking has been a dud, with a very few exceptions that I need to write about here soon!

Have you heard about E. S. Gardner and his book series about Perry Mason?

I haven't, but I'll take a look! Courtroom stuff tends not to be my favorite, but my wife and I have a sentimental fondness for Perry. Her father loved Raymond Burr, Perry Mason more than Ironsides, so we watched a lot of reruns of those together before he passed away some years ago.

Thanks for the recommendation!!
 
Just finished the audio version of “Old Bones” by Lincoln Child & Doug Preston. Female narrator was perfect for this Dr. Nora Kelley/ Agent Corey Watson murder mystery.
I read a ton of the Child & Preston Pendergast series a couple of years ago and enjoyed them a lot but the later novels seemed to drift off into cartoonish fantasy. I may have to go back and sample a newer one and see if it got any better.
 
Don't miss the rest of the Flavia de Luce series! Here's the series page at Penguin, noting that they're listed in reverse order (newest first). Currently 10 of them, and while there aren't any new ones planned (the author is 83, I think?), he describes Flavia as taking a break for tea and to mull the future.
Lol actually, I went straight to AbeBooks, ordered the entire series as second hand books, and they are sitting here awaiting my attention. I've been working through a bunch of library books, and a couple of other recent purchases, but they're next on my list.

My daughter is doing a survey of science fiction this semester just for her own enjoyment, and she's just finished Ursula K. LeGuin's Left Hand of Darkness upon my recommendation. I've not read it for decades, so that'll be my next one. Currently, I'm reading To Sleep in a Sea of Stars by Christopher Paolini (wow it gets moving pretty quickly!).
He also mentions that the series has been optioned and is in development with the CBC!!!
Well that's pretty exciting (potentially). Did you ever see the reboot "Anne" (I forget what it's called in the States) on CBC? I only saw season one, but it was definitely an interesting different take on the classic.
 
I read a ton of the Child & Preston Pendergast series a couple of years ago and enjoyed them a lot but the later novels seemed to drift off into cartoonish fantasy. I may have to go back and sample a newer one and see if it got any better.
I feel the same. I borrowed this one a bit reluctantly but was not disappointed with it. It was every bit as good as Crooked River, and Pendergast is also involved.
 
Did you ever see the reboot "Anne" (I forget what it's called in the States) on CBC?

I did, but a distinct lack of either murder or vampires left me wanting. 🤣 Kidding aside, good stuff, and all part of having me very excited for CBC's take on native son Alan Bradley's Flavia.

Well done on ordering all 10 at once! I was trying to figure out why we stopped after book 6, and it turns out that this is the point at which Penguin stepped in, signed him up to write four more, and re-released the first six. Well, we read all six of those in a heartbeat, and I guess got distracted while waiting for the next one during the reset of the set, as it were. Hey, we're busy! 🤣

My daughter is doing a survey of science fiction this semester just for her own enjoyment, and she's just finished Ursula K. LeGuin's Left Hand of Darkness upon my recommendation.

GREAT call! The more Ursula, the better.

Someone who clearly read a lot Ursula was Becky Chambers, whose book, The Long Way to a Small, Angry Planet kicks off a short (4-book) series, followed by A Closed and Common Orbit, Record of a Spaceborn Few, and The Galaxy and The Ground Within. The titles all sound like poetry, don't they? :)

In addition to the exceptional humane-ness and fundamental optimism of these four, what jumps out is that hardly anything happens in them. They're character studies, and exercises in world-building. There's a lot of talking among people of very different species and experiences. In that sense, "humane" is too narrow a word by far! Downright species-ist! Let's try "supremely empathetic."

The idea of identity gets pulled in a lot of different directions. It's one thing for somebody to be born a human on Mars to feel pulled between Terran and Martian identities, but a solid handful of the characters in these books have never set foot on any planet, the aforementioned spaceborn folks. It's an extension of the idea that you can't see borders from space, so why get so worked up about national identity when we're all from the same planet -- if you're not from any planet, and there are a whole bunch of species on the only ship you've ever lived on and they're all getting along, why even bother getting worked up about planetary identity? Be who you are, with people who are being who they are, and find ways to foster empathy. Is that so hard? 🤣 In practice, yeah, of course it is, but it's the role of speculative fiction to imagine a future where maybe we can.

It's not just her ideas and her characters and her own spirit as a writer that make these books so special. She's also a superlative wordsmith. It's just a real pleasure to spend 1000+ pages in her company when she's clearly taking such care with our time together.

The fourth book in the series has the least happening of all of them, and the fewest characters, but it's a particular kind of treat. The Five-Hop One-Stop is a convenience store on an otherwise uninhabited planet at the intersection of several transit tunnels, so the proprietrix stocks all kinds of snacks. Technical Things Happen, and all the tunnels shut down, and tensions run high as a bunch of gubmints start accusing each other of skullduggery with lots of threats if this isn't fixed fast, but really, it was Just One Of Those Things, and our handful of travelers have to make the best of it for a couple of days while it all get sorted out.

It turns into a multi-day potluck as people just talk about what food and fellowship means in their widely varying social contexts, and it's some of the most imaginative writing about food that I've ever encountered. It made me realize how little of this I've seen in even the best sci-fi storytelling.

In the meantime, there are Things To Be Worked Out, as Secrets Are Exposed, etc etc. It also came out in 2020, which means it was written before All This™, but the sense of unplanned, forced isolation, along with a suspicion that everything would be easier for everyone if the conspiracy theorists would stop yapping and focus on actually taking care of people really resonated with me.

But if you're looking for space opera shoot-em-ups, this ain't that. (Anything by John Scalzi will get you closer to the mark, although he even is having too much fun to care as much about plot as he might. Highly recommended nonetheless, especially for his scabrous view of unchecked militarism and governmental authority.)

But for books that love life, and food, and the company of friends in worlds that you'd never have imagined, Becky's quartet has that in spades. I love reading and love being alive, but I still can't say that there are many books that put wind in my sails, making me gladder to be alive, and reminding me that there's work to do to make things better, and it can be done. All four of these did, and do. I may have to read 'em all again.
 
Someone who clearly read a lot Ursula was Becky Chambers, whose book, The Long Way to a Small, Angry Planet kicks off a short (4-book) series, followed by A Closed and Common Orbit, Record of a Spaceborn Few, and The Galaxy and The Ground Within. The titles all sound like poetry, don't they?
We love Becky Chambers' books! Katia is, in fact, just re-reading the Wayfarer quartet (at least the third time for the first in the series) as her next books for her sci-fi survey. And Tim, you are a wordsmith. You nailed all of the wonderfulness of Becky Chambers' work in such a perfect way. Honestly, I think the The Galaxy and the Ground Within is actually my favourite of the four Wayfarers, although I really love all four. There is supposedly a book 5 in the Wayfarer universe, so hopefully! We read the first in the Tea Monk series, Psalm for the Wild Built, and have the next on order from the library. I enjoyed it, but not as much. We really enjoyed To Be Taught, If Fortunate. Another wonderful study, beautiful and grim - have you read it? It's short and sad and amazing.
 
We love Becky Chambers' books!

That makes me so happy! These really are the best!

And Tim, you are a wordsmith. You nailed all of the wonderfulness of Becky Chambers' work in such a perfect way.

You're too kind! Becky makes it easy to be enthusiastic. 😁

Like you, I thought the Monk & Robot books were good but not as great as the Wayfarers, but I'd completely missed To Be Taught, If Fortunate! Will hop on that after I finish the Flavia de Luce I just checked out an hour ago. 🤣

(I generally prefer physical books, but all the ones I picked up last time are duds, so I pulled a Flavia -- re-reading #6 to get back up to speed -- from my library's electronic collection through the Libby app to my Kindle.)

Speaking of robots, do you know the Murderbot Diaries by Martha Wells? An AI "security" machine achieves sentience and finds an unexpected love for humanity, while still killing whoever needs killing. 🤣 One of the most oddly heartwarming series I've ever read, with a (appropriately enough) killer opening line: "As a heartless killing machine, I was a complete failure." 🤣

The first in the series is All Systems Red, which won both the Hugo and the Nebula and a bunch more awards, and the eighth is coming this fall. None are much more than 100 pages, but along with genuinely puzzling mysteries in each standalone episode, and a (again, appropriately) deadpan humor that WILL make you laugh out loud, they're sneaky mediations on the nature of consciousness, self-awareness, and connection.

I was going to say love, and yes that, but not in the romantic sense. More along the lines of protection and self-sacrifice: how far will you go to save those you love? And how many murders can you commit to do that while you're also watching soap operas in part of your brain? 🤣 For an AI enhanced android who can almost pass for human in a pinch, the answer is apparently "As many as you need to."

I adore these little books, and think you and Katia will too. Assuming you don't already know and love them!
 
I haven't, but I'll take a look! Courtroom stuff tends not to be my favorite, but my wife and I have a sentimental fondness for Perry. Her father loved Raymond Burr, Perry Mason more than Ironsides, so we watched a lot of reruns of those together before he passed away some years ago.

My Raymond Burr story…
On my first trip to Europe in 1975, our group - myself, my former hubby, and my in-laws - ran into Raymond Burr while walking around London, England. I noticed him first and said hello. He smiled back, and as the rest of the group began to realize who he was, my father-in-law (a big Perry Mason fan), attempted to take a picture of Mr. Burr - but was so flustered that he took the picture with his camera backwards and didn’t even notice. We all had a good laugh, including Mr. Burr. I asked him if he would mind my taking a photo of him, and he graciously agreed. I ended up taking two, and when the film was processed back home in Halifax, I realized that in one of the photos he was smiling, and in the second photo, he had what I called his Perry Mason demeanor. The two photos were placed in an album along with the rest of our trip pictures, and we showed the album to friends whenever they expressed an interest. We didn’t have to provide a live running commentary, since we had physically identified each picture in the album - with the exception of the two photos of Raymond Burr. Much to my amazement, not a single person ever recognized him in the first photo, where he was smiling. But virtually everyone realized who he was when they saw the second photo, the one with his neutral expression. :) That was 48 years ago, and my memory of that day in London hasn’t diminished one bit.

On that same trip, I saw James Stewart perform in a live production of “Harvey” (the tall, white, invisible rabbit/pooka, for those who remember the movie). He was simply marvelous (James Stewart, that is; although Harvey was pretty good too, for a rabbit). I also attended a truly phenomenal live production of “Jesus Christ Superstar” that same week. Ah, the good old days ….
 
Speaking of robots, do you know the Murderbot Diaries by Martha Wells?
Wow there's something in the air. Katia's substitute teacher on Tuesday suggested exactly that series to her! They spent quite a long time raving together about Becky Chambers' Wayfarer series.
 
Wow there's something in the air. Katia's substitute teacher on Tuesday suggested exactly that series to her!

It's funny, you wouldn't expect a series about a grumpy introvert murderous robot to be super life-affirming and sweetly heartwarming, but it is! You'll see a lot of references in Amazon reviews and elsewhere to falling in love with Murderbot, and you should pay heed, because you definitely will!

They're all told in the first person, and there are zero references to Murderbot's apparent gender, because it's not something that Murderbot cares about. Murderbot's sense of love is more familial or collegial rather than anything where gender would come in either way, and it takes a while for the reader to settle into this. We're so ingrained to have that be, say, the first question about a newborn, or pre-newborn gender reveal whatever. How can you relate to someone separate from ANY clues about gender?

I should note that the books don't actually make any reference to this whatsoever. None. Zero. Not only does Murderbot never reference its own sense of gender (honestly, I think it would think you ridiculous for bringing it up at all), but nobody around Murderbot references it either. They speak with it, have relationships with it, etc. but gender really truly doesn't factor in in the slightest.

It's such a non-factor that maybe some folks won't even notice it. It only came up in OUR household because my wife hears Murderbot's voice as feminine, and I hear it as masculine -- and we both acknowledged that it's because we imagine ourselves as Murderbot!

That is, I don't know what Martha Wells thinks about Murderbot's gender, but I want to BE Murderbot 🤣 so if I'm playing 'him' in the audiobook or movie in my mind or whatever, yeah, it's gonna be 'he'. Reviewers on Amazon are about equally divided, though! Some folks there feel very strongly that Murderbot is feminine, so your mileage will vary! LOL

Becky Chambers does something similar in that she starts from the idea, "What if the whole concept of 'from' was removed from identity? What becomes possible for relationships where even species is secondary rather than primary?" We of course are stuck with those things in our own lives, but it is an interesting idea, trying to get at the part of our personalities that's independent of what OTHER people say that our identity SHOULD be. And at the same time, how can and should we relate to other people apart from our own sense of what their identity might mean to us? Shouldn't it be more important to relate to someone based on how these things matter to them?

On one hand, I could imagine a conservative critic dismissing this as woke nonsense, but I think that that's rather missing the point of reading fiction at all. We read fiction to shed our skins, to take on someone else's identity.

I AM Dr. Watson, wounded war surgeon, equally exasperated and amazed by my new roommate Holmes, I AM 6-year old Scout Finch looking up to my father Atticus, I AM the angsty narcissist Holden Caulfield, I AM 14-year-old Celie in The Color Purple, not one whit less than I AM Mark Watney stranded on Mars trying to survive by my wits, a pencil, and my strategically deployed poop, and 12 year old Flavia de Luce, and a grumpy introvert killing machine who finds an unexpected love for people...well, some of them at least!

Anyway, that's why you should read the Murderbot Diaries. 🤣 This is an entertainingly eye-opening non-human identity to add to your experience of what it means to be a human. And the murders are never gory, and usually hilarious. The series is a masterpiece of tonal finesse on top of all the other things you could want from fiction (plot, character, language, etc.). It feels like a magic trick.

Final note: the series ain't cheap. I was a bookseller for many years, and have been in and out of various aspects of publishing for over 40 years. It's important to note the genuinely trivial difference in the expense of printing a 100 page novel and a 400 page novel in order to understand why these cost as much as they do. Buying all 8 of them (and hopefully more!) will rack up fast. If you can find them at your library, in person or online, you might prefer that route. Definitely the way I've read them!

But however you gotta get 'em, you gotta get 'em!
 
how can and should we relate to other people apart from our own sense of what their identity might mean to us? Shouldn't it be more important to relate to someone based on how these things matter to them?
Yes.

As for cheap - it's definitely worth browsing through AbeBooks for used or discontinued editions. You can get excellent quality at a fraction of the price, especially if you already live in the US or the UK. Adding the exchange rate and shipping for Canada does bump it up a bit sometimes, but if you're not too fussy about the state of the book, there are some smoking good deals, and it's worth looking out for the free shipping offers and sales they frequently have. My preference for purchasing books is: local used bookstores, local booksellers (we have two, one near us and one in Victoria, that we love), AbeBooks, and the last resort (always) is the big A.
 
I just finished Stephen King's Billy Summers. For me, King's books are like comfort food - familiar, enjoyable and satisfying. This story was not an exception, I enjoyed it. Now I need to keep whittling away at my book pile. I've been buying them a lot faster than I've been reading them.
 
I just finished Stephen King's Billy Summers. For me, King's books are like comfort food - familiar, enjoyable and satisfying. This story was not an exception, I enjoyed it. Now I need to keep whittling away at my book pile. I've been buying them a lot faster than I've been reading them.
I just started Billy Summers, and am liking it a lot. My husband, meanwhile, is reading Fairy Tale. Completely by accident, we both downloaded books by Stephen King.
 
Working my way through Christopher Paolini's To Sleep in a Sea of Stars. Definitely space opera. I am entertained, but I wouldn't say it's a brilliant book. It's interesting, and, as I said, entertaining (somewhat) but it's also about possibly 500 pages longer than it needs to be. There's a lot of thematic repetition that I don't feel really builds the story that strongly. I wouldn't say it's unnecessary, but I do feel it could have been crafted a little tighter.
 
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