Reading now How to Be Lost by Amanda Eyre Ward. In upstate New York, a child disappears when she is five. Fifteen years later, her mother sees a photo in a magazine and is convinced that is her long lost daughter, grown up. Another of her daughters goes to Montana to try to find her.

I recommended The Golem and the Jinni to my bookclub and we read it. I enjoyed it and would recommend it. Opinions there varied.

Finished City of Blades, the 2nd in the Divine Cities trilogy, and enjoyed it. I'm taking a break with a lighthearted book about a travel guide for the undead called The Shambling Guide to New York. I would not have picked it up except that the author Mur Lafferty wrote one of the novels I read for the Hugo awards. This one is amusing, but her later book was better IMO.

I have just finished "The Favourite Sister" by Jessica Knoll which I thought was going to be a murder mystery. Actually it is about a group of high achieving women who are on a TV reality show in New York and is related (rather unreliably!) by some of them. The murder is rather incidental and the title rather odd as sister Kelly isn't really a focus of the story.

Some readers in the reviews gave up on the book and I can see why. I had to concentrate onto who was telling the story and in what time and setting we found ourselves. Not one of my usual skip reads and I am reading it again from the beginning to pick up the clues I missed.

I also have a book I requested from the library "Money in the Morgue" an Inspector Alleyn book started by Ngaio Marsh and completed by Stella Duffy.

I'm reading The Couple Next Door by Shari Lapena for my book club. This has been on my TBR list for a time and evidently I ordered it ILL recently as my name is still in it! (what are the chances I'd get the same exact copy that was passed out in our group?) I either never received it, or just didn't get to it at the time because this is my first read of it. I must say, I don't like it much. I normally enjoy thrillers of this type but my mind is just finding fault with everything. I don't want to spoil it for anyone else so my thought is that my reading taste is changing and could be why I'm having trouble selecting appealing books. Unless a book is going to profoundly affect me in a bad way I try to complete all my book club assignments. I'm more than halfway in one sitting so it's not like it doesn't go right along. I may change my mind by the end of it and I'll report back in. Please don't let my opinion deter anyone from reading this. After all, I'm no literary critic. Maybe this will teach me something about my changing self, which is always good. (retirement really is a game changer!) Sorry this is so wordy.

I finished The Cuckoo's Calling and liked it a lot. Have just barely started Memento Mori by Muriel Sparks. My favorite of hers, and I haven't read a great many of them, is A Far Cry from Kensington.

I’m halfway through The Last Hours and enjoying it very much! Thank you those of you who mentioned it.

Donna

The last Letter from your Lover by Jojo Moyes picked up from the library was another 'lost memory' book (aka 'Stella Bains of last week). Again much jumping about from 'now' where young professionals discuss their active sex-lives and drink too much, to 'then' the 1960's where over-wealthy but equally shallow people drink too much while wearing fur coats and expensive jewellery. The 'plot' revolves around old letters found by a young reporter in the vaults/library of her office.

The inner workings of a newspaper office (Moyes was a journalist) was interesting.

I had to give up on The Woman in the Window by A. J. Finn after 132 pages. I don't know why I let it go on that long. I just don't care to spend my leisure reading time learning about a voyeur who drinks too much alcohol, offends people, and lies. I had the same problem with The Girl on the Train by Paula Hawkins. Just not my thing.

Kathy, I disliked Girl on the Train, too. I finished it, but I didn’t like it. :)

Donna

Returned three books to the library after reading a couple of chapters each. It's not a failure, as I find wonderful books now and then by that method. But many are not worth the turn of the page.

Back to my TBR pile.

I am well into Golden Hill and am really enjoying it. Finally, a book I look forward to getting back to each time.

I've just finished up naturalist/writer Sy Montgomery's lovely book called "How to be a Good Creature: A Memoir in 13 animals" (or similar). Just a gentle read as she recounts her household pets as the scaffolding on which to hang her memoir-ish chapters. Very sweet - if you are an animal lover, you'll enjoy this. Plus - whoever the artist was who illustrated the book was fabulous. So - short read. Sweet without being saccharine, and now I'm going to pull out another Montgomery I have lurking in the TBR pile somewhere... She's a good read.

And then, in contrast (still good but not so gentle a read), I'm working my way through Giles Lytton Strachey's interesting and gossipy biography of Queen Victoria (1921)... Lytton Strachey was a member of the Bloomsbury Group and according to Wiki, he's know for establishing "a new form of biography in which psychological insight and sympathy are combined with irreverence and wit." I'm enjoying this one as well. Good sense of humor. Witness what he is reported to have said when he was dying of cancer: "If this is dying, then I don't think much of it." :-}

Oh, and the Christmas catalogues!!!

I finished Memento Mori by Muriel Spark. It's a wicked look at mostly well-to-do aging friends (or "frenemies") who are getting telephone calls from people with different voices telling them to remember they must die.

A quote from a Google source says "Perhaps more than any other book Spark wrote, Memento Mori reflects
her great theme that everyday life is characterized by both a spiritual
presence and the workings of our own individual spirit and conscience." I read several reviews to try to get more insight into the book, but they were all quite similar and spoke of dark humor, beauty, and complexity.

I recall trying to read Muriel Spark many years ago and just could not get drawn in. Maybe it is time I gave her work another chance.

I have the same recollection, Woodnymph.

Now I've started A Killing Spring by Gail Bowen. Our heroine is a political science professor in Regina, Saskatchewan, Canada, who solves murders. This is the first of her books I've read, and I'm enjoying it.

I finished The Last Hours by Minette Walters last night. I enjoyed it very much, but I thought it was getting a little long. Then that ending! ACK! :) Is there a sequel?

I ordered a copy of The Ravenmaster from the library. They only have a few copies and they are all checked out, so not sure when I'll get it. Next up I have a novel called Arrowood by Laura McHugh.

Donna

Dear Mrs. Bird by A.J. Pearce.

Just finished Golden Hill by Francis Spufford and enjoyed it very much. Loved the author's writing skill and style.

Donna - I'll be interested to hear what you think of Arrowood. I've been meaning to get around to it.

I read Laura McHugh's The Weight of Blood and thought it was really good - a bit dark, as books set in the Ozarks tend to be, but very good. Laura lives in my town and she attended our book club meeting when we discussed her first novel. It was so interesting to have her there.

I've just checked out 2 I've long wanted to read: "Killers of the Flower Moon" and "Tangerine." My class on Ancient Egypt will be ending soon, so I will have more time to read for pleasure. Happy thanksgiving, everyone!

Woodnymph, thank you for thinking of me after reading Tales of a Female Nomad: Living Large in the World by Rita Golden Gelman. I took a look at her website, and I like her attitude. I definitely want to read the book of her travels. A traveler who isn't culturally grumpy and touristy . . . it sounds refreshing.

I read Killers of the Flower Moon: The Osage Murders and the Birth of the FBI a few months ago. I may have mentioned it in earlier threads. It's a horrific story, so I can't say I liked it. Actually I got viscerally upset, but I think David Grann did a good job telling the story.

Is the Tangerine you mentioned the one by Christine Mangan? If so, I read it. But I won't say anything about it, because I might be a spoiler and I'm curious to know what you think, first.

Yvonne, Francis Spufford's name caught my eye. I associate him with nonfiction writing. (I May Be Some Time: Ice and the English Imagination is one that I like very much.) So I was surprised to find out Golden Hill is fiction. Sometimes writers of nonfiction can handle fiction in a way pleasing to me even more than writers who concentrate only on novels. I'm glad you liked it, as you have made me want to give it a try.

And a Happy Thanksgiving to all my US friends. I sometimes wish that we, on this side of the Pond, took time to reflect on what we have to be 'thankful' for.

Thank you, Vee. It is indeed a nice holiday.

I finished reading The Deepest Roots br Miranda Asebedo. For the past 100 or so years all the girls in one community have been born with a special talent, like finding, healing, fixing etc.. To many of them it feels like a curse. This is the story of 3 teenage friends coping with secrets, problems, and trying to find out the secret behind the "curse". I liked it enough that I may look for others by her.

After completing John Sanford's Holy Ghost...I'm now on the last few pages of Kate Morton's The Clockmaker's Daughter.

What an oddly constructed tale! It almost seems as though Morton threw the entire manuscript up in the air and once it landed...proceeded to write each chapter as it related to what fell on the floor. I still admire her writing talent and the story is interesting but the telling is so chopped up that it's lost some of it's appeal. Major characters are introduced out of sequence with apparent little relevance until one reads further on in the book. Essentially...it's a story/mystery told by the clockmakers daughter who resides as the spirit of Birchwood Manor. But to get to the adventure...Morton has first introduced the reader to a modern day London archivist, Elodie Winslow and all her personal trappings. Elodie leads the way to the tale through her interest in the history of John Stratton. If I extrapolate beyond this brief posting, I'm afraid I will ruin the story for someone who may elect to read the book. So...pick up the book to read with the caveat that it's a bit fragmented at times but has the same "Morton" talent as witnessed in her previous books. It doesn't flow easily but IMO..it was worth the effort. It's a love story and a murder mystery all thrown into one challenging literary creation.

I have Lisa Jewell's Then She Was Gone and John Connolly's The Woman In The Woods lined up for the next few weeks as time allows.

I so admire you all who read at such rapid paces...books upon books. I'm such a snail by comparison. My days are so full of life's demands that I'm lucky to have a couple of bedtime hours to devote to my latest printed interest. I really must do something about this situation.

Wishing you all a wonderful Thanksgiving. It is so cold in the northeast right now that the turkeys refuse to give up their feathers. 8°F here this evening.

Winter,

I laughed out loud reading what you wrote:

It is so cold in the northeast right now that the turkeys refuse to give up their feathers.

Happy Thanksgiving to you too.

Reading has mostly been a half-hour bedtime activity for me this month, as I have been up to my ears in teaching and writing and grading exams and assignments. I set aside The Genius of Birds to read Sabriel by Garth Nix, the first book in what was the The Old Kingdom trilogy before it sprouted a prequel and a sequel and turned into a series.

I loved the simplicity of it. Unlike much of the fantasy I have read in recent years that has been trying to tell several converging stories at once and/or been burdened with overcomplicated plots, it was just one story line, well written and well plotted. Finished it last night and continued on to Lirael, the second book in the series, which promises to be even better.

Once I finish the third book, Abhorsen, I plan to move on to Philip Pullman's Sally Lockhart books.

I got a reminder notice from the library that Alderman's The Power is due tomorrow, so I guess I'd better settle down and finish it today.

Netla, I read Sabriel when it came out years ago, and barely remember it - just that I liked it. For some reason, I never read the other 2 books in the series, although I think they are on my bookshelves somewhere. After your comments, it's time for me to pull them out for a second look.

Finished Reading How to Be Lost by Amanda Eyre Ward. A five-year-old child disappears from her home in upstate New York. Years later, her mother sees a photo in a magazine and is convinced the Montana woman in the photo is her long lost daughter. Another of her daughters drives to Montana to see if she can find her. In spite of the interesting premise, I found the book nothing special, and did not like the ending.

One Life by Australian author Kate Grenville was an interesting look at the life of her mother, Nance. On the surface a totally unremarkable woman from a poor-ish, barely educated family. Her parents were constantly on the move trying their hands at farming, pub-running, hotel managing and the children received little consistent schooling. Despite this Nance trained as a pharmacist and held down ill-paid jobs during the Depression at a time when ultra macho Australian men were not happy to see a woman in the work-place. Well worth reading.

I've been listening to Becoming via the BBC radio 4. Read by it's author Michelle Obama.

I just finished Arrowood. Kathy, it was very good! It’s a sad story, but beautifully written.

Donna

Thanks, Donna. That moves it up quite a few notches on my TBR list.

On impulse I grabbed the latest Agatha Raisin from the New Books shelf on my way out with a requested WW2 mystery "Money in the Morgue" written by Stella Duffy based on an unfinished plot by Ngaio Marsh, set in New Zealand.

I wish I hadn't bothered! Agatha still "howls" at people and has crushes on every likely man who comes her way. I gave up. (Vee, stop sniggering! I hoped it might be different.)

The Marsh/Duffy book was true to the time, I thought, and meticulous in following the original style. I did wonder though if the word "morgue" was common then. I recall that a "Mortuary" was the name used in books of the period. Morgue is more a US term, surely?

Annpan, snigger/ Moi? Like Agatha I have a friend who thinks every man is 'after' her. Innocent remarks about the weather made to her while in a checkout queue are interpreted as "I find you irresistible. Let me make mad passionate luuurve to you"

Phone calls where an wife answers cause her to say "That woman seems to think her husband wants to get in a relationship with me."

Perhaps it is just sour grapes on my part and I should pay attention to remarks in the supermarket about the price of bread/cabbage/yoghurt for their inner meaning and prepare my family for my imminent departure on the back of an Arab steed into the sunset.

Vee, your friend sounds like a woman who lived in the building where I rented a flat in the UK. She had a fixation about men and believed that the Warden of the place was attracted and following her. He had a flat on the same floor, so it was normal for him to go up the stairs after her sometimes. However she even complained to the Council who owned the building about his behaviour,

She was mid-fifties and no oil-painting, so why she thought a man in his thirties with a wife and children was after her was a mystery to us!

Never lend a book like that; or if you must, buy an extra copy just for lending.

Yoyobon, Anya Seton's Green Darkness struck me like that when I first read it. It's been a while; maybe I will read it again in the depths of cold January.

Meanwhile, I have started Rainbows on the Moon by Barbara Wood. The setting is Hawaii in missionary times. James Michener she is not, but I will continue. I adore Hawaii.

Green Darkness was one of my favorite books years ago. I think I read every novel Anya Seton wrote.

I finished "Tangerine" the first novel of Christine Mangan. As a psychological thriller, it was good, but not great, in my view. It took me a while to get into it because the 2 female characters were so similar, and in a symbiotic relationship. On the "blurb" one reviewer opined, "this could well be written by Donna Tartt, Patricia Highsmith, and Gillian Flynn, as a screenplay directed by Alfred Hitchcock." I would not go that far, as I think Tartt and Highsmith have far more talent. Another reviewer labeled the author as the literary descendant of Daphne Du Maurier. Again, I do not agree. What I liked most were the descriptions of Tangier.

Frieda. you read this. What did you think of it?

Donnamira, Lirael is a pretty good continuation of Sabriel, and explores a different part of the world Nix created in the first book. It has two converging storylines (one of which is considerably more interesting to me than the other). The third book, Abhorsen, seems to be a direct continuation of Lirael, while Sabriel can be read as a stand-alone novel.

I am reading Lenny's Book of Everything by Karen Foxlee. She is an Australian author but the book is set in the US just after the first moon landing. It's one of those aimed at a wide audience - from 12 - 90 as they say.

I'm also reading Why We Sleep by Matthew Walker, and although I'm not even halfway through, I wouldn't hesitate to recommend this, with one proviso. You are almost certainly going to want to go to bed earlier!

We are listening to Tombland by C J Sansom. I really like the Shardlake character, but as seems increasingly prevalent now, I think an author with a few books under the belt doesn't get an editor. There is much wandering about in the prose, and the narrator makes Shardlake sound like a bit of a whinger, so I feel I could be enjoying it all a bit better as a real book that one of my RP colleagues has taken a red pencil to!

Woodnymph, although I realize what Mangan was trying to do with her psychological thriller, Tangerine, I feel she was only partially successful. Like you, I enjoyed the setting and descriptions of Tangier especially. The part in Bennington, Vermont was not as interesting to me, but I suppose it was necessary to set up the dynamics of the relationship between Alice and Lucy and to a lesser extent the relationships of the women with John, Alice's husband. However, I think the characterizations were not well defined beyond Alice is weak and Lucy is bad; John seems barely drawn, in my opinion. That's the reason it is hard for readers (I'm one) to distinguish the women characters in the every-other chapter narration, which btw has become trite (it appears so often in today's novels that I'm tempted to impose a self-ban of reading any story told in that style).

I've noticed in the past five years -- maybe as much as a decade -- crops of newer writers are trying to resurrect some of the older genres. Nothing wrong with that, because many of the old stories are fascinatingly atmospheric.

Unfortunately, many of these writers don't have the skill to recapture the old style -- or even update it well. One example -- and Mangan is guilty, I think: Writers use opacity as a substitute for subtlety because they simply haven't worked out how to be subtle. Mangan's pastiche of Highsmith (I definitely see this influence) and maybe Tartt bear comparison. I don't know Gillian Flynn for anything but her Gone Girl which I didn't like, so I can't say about Flynn's and Mangan's styles being similar.

As for a reviewer saying Mangan is a "literary descendant of Daphne du Maurier" - Ha! I've heard and read that as a lure for hopeful readers for going on sixty years now, and my mother says that particular come-on has been used since the 1930s. Hype is lazy, sometimes, and Mangan's Tangerine is as overhyped as any new thriller is nowadays.

I am nearly finished with Paradox by Catherine Coulter. I'm ready to be done with it. It was interesting at the beginning (a small-town police chief witnesses a murder and has to discover who the murder is and who was killed), and she added some interesting other lines to the plot, but now it's just tiresome to me. Anyway, I'm almost done now. :)

My copy of The Ravenmaster arrived from the library yesterday and I'm eager to start it. Especially now that we just booked a cruise that is round trip from Southampton, and we'll be spending a couple of days in London! I'm really excited. It's not till the end of June, but I'm still excited!

Donna

Great planning on your part, Donna, to get your holiday fixed up so far ahead. (Note to self: Work on mine.) :-)

It's coming to the end of the semester, so it's quite busy with all the grading, the students suddenly realizing that their absences do make a difference to their grade and "is there any extra credit?", and all the other bits and pieces of life. I like being busy, but I have to admit that I'm ready for the Christmas break. Until then - grading, grading, grading...

Reading is still going on but rather slowly. I'm reading an absolutely fascinating NF about Joseph Lister (he who introduced using ether in surgery + emphasized washing your hands between patients). As a Victorian medical and social history nerd, this is right up my alley. Plus - the author has a great sense of humor which she injects every now and then...

Called "The Butchering art: Joseph Lister's quest to transform the grisly world of Victorian medicine" by Lindsay Fitzharris. (A Top Ten science book in Fall 2017 from Publishers Weekly.) Just fab (if you like this sort of stuff).

Otherwise, I'm reading college sophomore and junior last-minute attempts to save their grades. (Nah. I have some super-lovely students really!)

I am reading a really good thriller called Our House by Louise Candlish. It is a novel about a couple in London who decide to divorce and agree on a "bird's nest" custody arrangement in which Mom and Dad take turns living in the main home with the kids and alternately live in a nearby apartment when it is not their turn to be with the kids.

The novel is not really about the arrangement as much as the arrangement facilitates the plot. The husband/father's bad decisions lead the Mom to come home one day and find the house has been sold out from under her and strangers moving in. That is how the book starts.

It gets so much more interesting page by page. Really can't put it down.

Tackykat - that sounds like a good one. Is it ominous? Please post more when you finish it. I'll have to track it down as my Library doesn't have it.

It is good and it is definitely OMINOUS. Lots of twists, and I'm only halfway through (started it Sunday!) It's a new book at my library.

Frieda, I would agree with your assessment of "Tangerine." Re writing about that part of the world, I prefer the work of Paul Bowles, who lived in Tangier (e.g. "The Sheltering Sky.") No one could ever compare to Daphne du Maurier, in my opinion. She is in a class all by herself.

Now, I am trying to read "Killers of the Flower Moon." A lot of twists and turns, but it is a sad read, in terms of the terrible treatment of Native Americans in Oklahoma. The book does entail the birth of the FBI and reveals a youthful J.Edgar Hoover.

Louise Penney's newest mystery has just come out: "Kingdom of the Blind". I am very eager to get a copy.

As a coincidence with Wood and her comment about the FBI: I've just checked out of the university library a non-fiction which details how the FBI controlled the world of African-American literature during Hoover's time. <shakes my head>

(It looks a bit scholarly, and I'm in the middle of grading so it might have to wait for a proper read during the holidays.)

The world can be rather strange at times.