What Fiction are you reading this week, December 29, 2024?

[hermetic]

I just started reading We Solve Murders by Richard Osman. Madcap fun, with an entertaining new cast of characters.

I'm listening to Lula Dean's Little Library of Banned Books by Kirsten Miller. A small town in Georgia, a battle over banned books, and a little lending library that changes everything. This provocative and hilarious story will have book lovers cheering. I'm sure loving it and need to buy the book to add it to my collection to be given away when books like this one are all banned. It's not entirely fictional as it involves some painfully real people. And I'm sure these same conversations occurred in households across the nation this past year.

Washing everyone a happy New Year's Eve and New Year's Day. After that, it's bound to get messy. Do what you can to survive. Try to keep hope alive.

Here comes the new year
And events will soon be shocking
So treat yourself now to some good cheer
And dance like no one is watching
(I ain't kitten)

[MiHale]

1. Dust...third book in the Silo trilogy.

[hermetic]

2. Author Hugh Howey

A dystopian series of post-apocalyptic science fiction books. The series started in 2011 with the short story "Wool" and the stories take place in underground silos.

Sounds interesting.

[yellowdogintexas]

3. "It Happened In Silence" by Karla M Jay

I went on a Kindle spree yesterday and had to start this immediately after reading the sample!!!

This is a powerful tale of family, a celebration of decency, and the heartbreak of society's injustices then that rings true today. ★★★★★

Set in a world where women of the KKK betray their neighbors, where horrors of unscrupulous foundling homes come to light, and buried mysteries are not all that hidden. It's Georgia 1921. Mute since birth, fifteen-year-old Willow Stewart has one task to complete—to leave her Appalachian homestead and find a traveling preacher and her brother, Briar. When a peddler kidnaps her, she escapes only to face an unjust arrest and penal servitude. The laws are not on her side. Or her brother's.
Briar is serving time on a chain gang with four months left. When an immigrant boy asks him for help, Briar must decide if he should jeopardize his freedom to help the penniless boy.
Soon Willow and Briar become ensnared in a world of cruel secrets, savage truths, deceitful practices, and desperate predicaments.
This novel delves into the gut and sinew of fairness, probing often inexplicable questions, as old and persistent as the forest itself.

This is one of those books that catches and holds you. It is beautifully written; I highly recommend it. This is set in North Georgia (in Marjorie Sporkfoot's district actually). I am not that far in and I can see how someone like her is sent to Congress.

I finally finished The Isis Covenant and thoroughly enjoyed it. I have one more from this series remaining. James Thompson writes a really good convulated adventure story.

[hermetic]

4. Wow

Thanks!

[japple]

5. Many thanks, hermetic, and all of the DUers in this group who sent

good wishes, healing energies and prayers for me after my car crash last week. I am healing as fast as an old woman can. Will finally see orthopedist tomorrow.

I finished reading Wolf Hollow by Lauren Wolk, a YA book. It was very good. I think someone in this group recommended it. Someone else posted about reading Little Shepherd of Kingdom Come, which I had never read, so I'm starting that one today.

Happy New Year to one and all.

[hermetic]

7. HI!!

So happy to see you. You keep on hanging in there. Happy reading.

[cbabe]

6. I tried Philip K. Dick's classic: Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?

Last edited Sun Dec 29, 2024, 01:44 PM - Edit history (1)

Style a bit archaic. Very dark. Tech and nuclear war. Man struggling to find his place in a dead world.

Not my cup of tea. One more patriarchal world killer book. Plus I don’t care much for sad sack ‘heroes’.

Back to comfort reading: John Sandford’s Judgement Prey.

And next up library hold. Cory Doctorow’s The Bezzle. I read a couple of his lately and enjoyed his prose and ‘far thinking’.

[hermetic]

8. I really enjoy Doctorow's writing

That one sounds good. Just came out this year. "..a high stakes thriller where the lives of the hundreds of thousands of inmates in California's prisons are traded like stock shares." Oh, and it's Bezzle, just in case someone wants to look it up. No big deal.

[cbabe]

9. Fixed it. Thanks.

[mentalsolstice]

10. Banyan Moon by Thao Thai

It’s about three generations of Vietnamese women and their pasts and present. Next up is The Nickel Boys by Colson Whitehead.

Happy New Year everyone! 🍾🥂

[Shambala]

11. Naked Lunch by William Burroughs

It’s been on my shelf for a while but I finally pulled it down to give it a read.

Cheers to the new year!

[LogDog75]

12. Take Your Breath Away by Linwood Barclay

Andrew Mason and his wife, Brie, live in a house they're going to renovate and flip for a profit. She wants this to be the last house they live in after renovating it. Andrew and his business partner operate a construction business and have been friends for many years. They take a week off and the partners go to a lake where they each own a cabin. While they're there, Brie disappears and suspicion falls on her husband, Andrew.

Six years later, Brie is still missing and Andrew has changed his last name and lives in the next town. A woman shows up at the house Andrew and Brie used to live in and the house is gone and a new house is in its place. She starts screaming "Where's my house" and causing a scene. The next door neighbor called Andrew and said there was a woman who looked like Brie. That's not the only sighting of Brie. Brie's sister, brother, and brother-in-law are visiting Brie's mother in the hospital when they looked out the hospital's window at the parking lot and see a woman who looks like Brie and she waves at them.

Is Brie alive or dead? If she's alive, where has she been these past six years. If she's dead, who is this woman?

This is the third book by Linwood Barclay I've read in the past two months. I like his style of writing and he tells an interesting story. He kind of reminds me of James Patterson style but Barclay's stories and characters are better developed. I'm usually good at figuring out whodunit but this book took me to the end of the story to find out.

[BOSSHOG]

13. A Prisoner of Birth by Jeffrey Archer

Set in England. Murder conviction. Identity switch. Disputed Will. Good Stuff. About halfway done.

published 2008.

[Danascot]

14. The Border by Don Winslow

It's the third book of his cartel trilogy. He's a very talented story teller and an amazing writer. He has a half dozen story threads going each of which could be a separate novel. There's some brutal stuff in there, some based on real events I've recognized such as the murder of a bus full of students. I'm going to have ptsd by the time I finish it.