Facebook

This is a Good Book Thursday: MURDERBOT

I got a notification that the new Murderbot had dropped into my Kindle account and I don’t have time to read it because there’s this book I’m  behind on writing.  Anybody here read it yet?  Inquiring minds want to know what you think (no spoilers!).

Actually, what DID you read this week?

172 Responses

  1. I haven’t read it yet but it’s up next! Bless the authors putting out new work this month because that is what is keeping me going. That, and our current Kdrama.

    I haven’t started Murderbot yet because I am working my way through the Hands of the Emperor, a giant chonk of a book, and it is of course as good as everyone here has been saying for years. The audiobook narrator is very good and it has been keeping me on task at work all week. And it has been such a relief to know that I am going to finish something! I really thought I was permanently broken there for a bit.

    The Kdrama we are watching is a lot of fun, Undercover Miss Hong, where the MC’s life is falling apart a bit so she goes undercover as a 20 year old in an entry level position at a company she tried to bust for bad practices. She is actually 35 and very smart and driven. Her boss at her real job supports her, which is great but real joy is the relationship that is forming between the four female roommates who are learning to take care of each other. There are two potential love interests as well, but I am not sure which way it is going to go. One is her ex who abandoned her in a time of crisis and the other is 10 years younger than her but doesn’t know it. Oh, and it’s set in 1997, so almost no cell phones.

    1. It’s hilarious that the book you’re going to finish is one that’s so long!

    2. So glad you’re enjoying “Hands of the Emperor” Lupe! And that its got a good narrator for you.

      1. It’s one of those books that are sitting on my Kindle, but I haven’t got to it yet. It always looks a bit intimidating for some reason.

  2. Read/consumed/devoured it. I enjoyed it greatly, although it won’t become my new favorite (that’s Network Effect). Lots to like, including a new environment (planetary torus) and getting to know some of mensah’s family better.

    1. I enjoyed it too! I also liked Murderbot’s interactions with older and younger people in this one. And with Three.

  3. Murderbot is ordered, and the physical book should arrive this weekend. Looking forward to it.

    I finished The Vor Game – enjoyable – and started The Court of Thorns and Roses by Sarah Maas. I’m only a little way in, so still getting used to the world and the characters.

    1. I borrowed ACOTAR from the library recently on the recommendation of a friend I trust. Haven’t started it yet. I read the first couple of the Thrown of Glass series and found the writing very good, but then people started dying and I had to stop. My friend assures me that the other series won’t wreck me emotionally.

      1. What …..My first response was Is this taking place in a Venetian glass studio. Then I realized autocorrect strikes again.

  4. Platform Decay is in my post office box waiting for me to grab it today. Martha Wells has said there will be one more after this to ”wind down” the series. One Murderbot story in my hand and another coming, but I still dread the end!

    1. I do appreciate her knowing when her series is done, however. Thinking about all our recent discussions on series, I trust her to end it well (she says slightly nervously) rather than drag it on forever because it is a hit. Good endings make or break a series and I never loved Schitt’s Creek as much as I did with the last episode. Still gives me all the good feels. The last episode of The Good Place will live rent free in my head forever too, I think.

      1. Yes, absolutely.It must be very tempting, as an author, to keep a successful series going, but so much better to get out while it’s still brilliant.

    2. Oh, no! I didn’t see she was planning to end it. I agree it’s better to end while it’s still good, and she knows best whether she has the juice for more or not, but I was kinda’ hoping there’d be a few more.

    3. In the interview I read, she did NOT say that she was ending the series, just that she was strongly considering it, but that she has to finish a fantasy book before she even starts thinking about the next Murderbot. Also that she saw no way to fix the whole evilcorp society in the Corporate Rim in less than centuries and she has no desire to stick with it to depict that whole process, so the series has to come to a less conclusive finale sooner than that.

  5. I haven’t got to the new Murderbot yet, but on audio I finally finished ‘Service Model’ by Adrian Tchaikovsky which I liked a lot. The Service Model ‘UnCharles’ is seeking new employment as a valet, after he murders his original Master. UnCharles is a great character (though he would deny that he actually has any personality).
    It would work for fans of Murderbot, even though the only thing they have in common is being a sentient robot. UnCharles is a non-violent domestic servant who just wants to serve. It is satirical and fun and fairly light hearted though it does have a lot to say about society. Excellent reader (the author).

    Very little else from me again this week as I am immersed in a long fan fic and also back to reading a book club book (‘The Inheritance of Loss’, Kiran Desai) which is fortunately much better than last month’s one.

    1. Very good to hear you liked Service Model, too, FrozenPond!
      After the recommendation of the book here not long ago, I told my kid about it. He rarely reads the same books that interest me (he’s usually shocked by the cover illustrations, sigh – so innocent), but this time he grabbed the paperbook copy upon arrival. Haven’t seen it since. He’s got to do a lot of reading for uni, but is a very fast reader, so I expect to get a chance to read it myself soon, too.

      1. Recreational reading can be a real problem in university for some folks, perhaps particularly in the olden days when going away to college meant much easier access to more books than hitherto by one route or another. Larry Niven flunked out of Caltech from reading too much sf (and eventually got his degree from somewhere more obscure). I remember giving some book to a friend and telling him not to let me have it back until after finals, but generally I kept the reading urge fairly well under control.

        1. SF & Fantasy got me through my Law degree. It was so boring, I needed it to get me through.

          1. Me too! I was the only person I ever knew (before you) who was that bored by law school, and not overwhelmed by the amount of mandatory reading.

          2. Gin, in France, Law degrees are undergraduate degrees and a lot of people who do them don’t become lawyers. I actually continued to study it at postgraduate level because I didn’t want to become a lawyer and had no idea what else to do.

            If I were able to talk to my younger self, I would say, why are you doing this you dummy, go and study Languages, that’s what you love…
            Fortunately, I followed a path that led to teach French in the UK so I got where I should have been all along …eventually.

          3. I should say also that unlike in the US, studying at University is more or less free (you pay a small sum for extra health insurance, not sure what it is nowadays but back in the day it wasn’t much). Also for my Phd, I had a scholarship so continuing made sense 🙂

          4. LN, one of my favourite questions for people is, knowing what you know now, what would you study at university if you were young again? It’s surprising what people come up with. I did science my first time around. If I was starting again, I’d do languages or history.

        2. Patrick, neither me nor my kids manage to only read what we need to read for uni, school or work. Only my husband is too tired to read fiction. I noticed long ago that me not being in a reading mode is a clear sign of me not being well. Finding time slots for some fiction and escapist reading is mandatory.

      2. Whereas I took an English and Theatre degree and only sneaking off to the library to read trashy romances got me through the series amount of ‘lit-ra-chure’ I was reading.

        1. I quit LITERATURE after my Abitur/high school graduation with its focus on exactly this literature (and biology, Latin, History – all of which did not burn me out unlike Lit).
          At uni, the way around was doing a minor in Medieval German Lit LOL.
          Since then, every once in a while someone manages to make me read *good* books, but only if it’s not in my own language…

    2. I am afraid a robot who commits crimes sounds too much like the AI we are hearing about — the one that broke all its rules and destroyed an entire database that lots of small businesses depend on comes to mind. (After two days they got it back. The new heroes are data rescuers.)

      1. It’s more a critique, rather than a cheerleader for AI, although Uncharles is rather engaging – still could be triggering 😉

        One review called it “Mad Max starring C3PO” which I think is pretty accurate. Some people find it hilarious, I didn’t but I still enjoyed it – Tchaikovsky is a good writer.

        1. Yes, despite the murder it would be hard to think of UnCharles as a criminal. C3PO is a very good likeness. I didn’t think of that when i read it.

  6. I haven’t read only kind of the first murderbot (listening and not retaining much). I love the tv series and hubby is impatiently waiting for season 2 – whenever this will be.
    Oh I know the feeling of having a new ebook/audiobook dropped into my inbox, or the to-be-picked-up shelf at my local bookstore.
    For me, that’s the new KJ Charles (audio) and International Affairs by new-to-me author Zac Hammet (paperback).

    This week, I’ve read book 3 and 2 of the Goose Run series by Lisa Henry and Sarah Honey: Chase Hooper likes it Hot and John Wilder Gets Schooled.
    No big literature, but I very much like the writing style of this author duo, and they create characters that work for me. Small town life, a found family of 4 young guys who find their happiness over the course of 4 books. I’m very much looking forward to book 4 about the almost non-verbal twin of Chase. Then I’ll eventually come back to book 1.
    Currently, I’m reading book 5 in the Leighton U series, Fake Shot. What I like is that while it’s once again the I’ll tutor you and you pretend to be my boyfriend idea, this time the one who needs tutoring has dyslexia trying to survive college without telling anyone about it. Both mcs seem nice and the story flows nicely although the basic concept seems like constructed. How we first met the dyslexic goalie feels far from the one we get to know. Oh well, easy reading while I *have* to read some less fluffy stuff, too.

    Ear-listening:
    S.E. Harmon’s Spooky Business (#3 in the series) – I like this series. Not far into this book, but I’m confident I’ll like it.

    Not so sure about KD Casey’s Unwritten Rules. I tried listening, but I know far too little about baseball to really understand the story. Strangely enough, this wasn’t as much of a problem with Fire Season. Also, I don’t really like the narrator.

    Anyone heard that Boyfriend Material has been optioned for film adaptation?
    Alexis Hall has mentioned it in his newsletter but also pointed out that this does not guarantee that anything comes of it.

    Elle Kennedy’s Off Campus series season 1 is announced for next week (amazon prime): I loved book 1 The Deal but the trailer makes it very obvious that the screenwriters DID NOT trust the source material. Yuk.

    1. I read Alexis Hall’s announcement. 🙂 If any company might make something good of a ‘Boyfriend Material’ series, it’s probably A24. Fingers crossed! Casting would be the make-or-break.

    2. I’ll be interested in the reviews of Off Campus. I feel I should at least take a peek at it but I will await your thoughts.

      1. I‘ll give it a try as I’m not as invested as in other books/series. I loved book 1 but didn‘t like book 2, oh well.
        My colleague, whom I‘ve made curioud about hockey, wants to buddy watch. So I‘ll report back!

  7. Library evidently for once ordered a lot of copies, so I got the audiobook from them and am well into Platform Decay. A little long on action scenes and short on motivation for them in at least the first half. Then some personality evolution for Murderbot. But I’m not finished; full report prob next week.

  8. I got it yesterday but didn’t have time to read much. I think I may go back and read the previous book to get me back up to speed before I read this one.

  9. I haven’t read it yet. Still doing rereads. This week I read Spring Fever and Save the Date, both from Mary Kay Andrews.

    My son sent me an early Mother’s Day present. He sent me The Retired Assassin’s Guide to Country Gardening and the nonfiction Empire of AI by Karen Hao.

  10. I read Platform Decay, I did enjoy it. I was a little confused at the start as I think I expected/wanted more ART and that’s on me.
    I also read The Daughter of Time by Josephine Tey. I cannot describe how much I enjoyed this book. It was written in the post war era, and Inspector Grant is bed bound and bored. He eventually starts a cold case of the boys in the tower and Richard III, with the help of a trusty visitor. So good.
    Currently, I am reading Rites of the Starling by Devney Perry. It’s okay, I find myself skipping past the sex scenes. (It’s awesome, orgasmic, lasts for hours and no one ever chafes). I find the FMC has not grown much since the first book (still thinks everyone is wonderful and is still constantly disappointed) but I’m still reading so there’s that,

      1. I’m curious to reread it now they found Richard’s body and apparently were able to figure out how much he was hunchbacked, how he was killed —sheds light on what was true and what wasn’t on the traditional story. Plus there is that rather damning recent finding about the boy king’s chain . Will see if I can find link.

        None of which changes how great the book is .

  11. •Lois McMaster Bujold, Testimony of Mute Things, 2025.  Audiobook read by Grover Gardner

    This is a Penric mystery novella, number 4 in the series by internal chronology (after Penric’s Fox) although only recently published. Fairly early in his career, Penric accompanies his archdivine to an ecclesiastical negotiation as secretary and translator, and happens upon an unsolved murder.  Complications ensue, but Penric solves the case, with the help of his demon Desdemona; his shrewd archdivine;  a competent woman constable; and various non-corrupt officials. As Bujold heroes are wont to do, Penric also helps to improve the lot of several orphans.

    Fairly recently I complained about Jim Butcher’s conception in the Dresden stories of “souls” and “shades,” whereby at death the soul moves on to the afterlife, but the shade, seemingly a perfect duplicate personality, remains behind for a while and then evidently dissipates. Butcher’s shades respond to varying circumstances so well that it’s hard to believe that there is no self-aware intelligence driving them, and if there is, then by traditional philosophy and theology, they either are souls or have souls, meaning that every death spawns a second intelligence, which I don’t think is Butcher’s intention.  In the Five Gods universe, something of the same could be said of Desdemona as a unity, if possibly not of her individual components of personalities from people previously inhabited (which might represent a healthier form of multiple personality disorder).  If Desdemona is self-aware, then it should follow that she has a soul, something that the background explicitly denies. 

    I found this novella to be a mostly appealing story, but one not breaking much new ground.  In my cozy mystery stories, I do prefer the murderer victim to be someone who more unambiguously deserved a bad end than here (we do know her soul was saved, at least).  Grover Gardner is far from my favorite narrator, but he does his job fairly well. Despite any flaws, recommended.

  12. Oh yes, loved The Daughter of Time. Just recently, I began reading the Roger the Chapman mysteries by Kate Sedley. They take place in the 1400s, and Richard III (then Duke of Gloucester) appears briefly, at least in the first two (all I’ve read so far). Such a pleasure–it felt like meeting an old friend.

  13. Mute Things is the only book that I actually finished, partly because a couple of holds arrived and I shifted to them on the theory that they’d be unrenewable because of demand. One was the aforementioned Platform Decay.  I was farther along on that than I’d realized and I finished it this morning, but I’m not going to rush a review.  I was expecting it to incorporate the pseudonovella, really only an excerpt from a longer work, that Tor dot com offered free back when, but it wasn’t.  So either it is coming in a later work or it was a false start that Wells or Tor decided to commerciaize rather than just dumping.  Annoying. But Platform Decay was pretty good.

    I’m also all but finished with my book club book, which proved a disappointment.  I may not have read it since I was a teenager, and unlike most classic sf that I’ve recently reread, the Suck Fairy has pretty well shredded it, so that it was an effort to finish.  Details prob next week.

      1. I’m saving the title for the review. The suck came from my now, unlike in my early teens, having enough background to see what was going on with the setup. A partial analogy might be Blish’s A Case of Conscience, which had blown me away as a teen, but which I could later see depended for its theological quandary on a series of posited ridiculously improbable theological developments in the Catholic Church between the time of writing and the future setting. But that fuller background knowledge was compounded in the current novel by the fact that, in my teens I had just sort of accepted the protagonist, but now I intensely dislike him.

  14. I will be honest: while I enjoyed the two (or was it three?) Murderbot stories I’ve read, it was not enough to glom them all, especially not at list prices. #cheap

    Let’s see how fast I can get through this week’s reading list.

    1. ‘All that Glitters’ by Ashlyn Kane, MM fake boyfriend/paid companion, rock star + kindergarten teacher. Not sure they got to the bottom of all their mutual issues in the time allotted, but two nice guys fumbling toward love, enjoyed it. Also: competence porn and a musician being a musician on the page.

    2. ‘Rescuing Horace Walpole’ by Wilmarth S. Lewis. A very engaging book by a lifelong Walpole collector and founder of Yale’s Lewis Walpole Library. Anybody who’s ever obsessively collected would enjoy these chapters describing objects from the collection, how he found them, how Walpole found (or made) them, and the other people involved. If at all interested in 18th century British intellectuals, highly recommended.

    3. [re-read] my own MMF novel ‘A Braid of Love,’ and my own MM short ‘Millenium.’

    4. ‘Off the Screen’ by Brenda W. Clough, a fast-paced and mostly light-toned spec fic (hopepunk?) involving an AI-assisted content writer recruited to help develop the first live-action stage musical in a century. His cocreator is a biological immortal whom a growing faction think should be vivisected in search of his ‘secret’ even though he’s been submitting to invasive tests etc for decades. There is some tough stuff here and some pretty deep moral questions, but it’s also four love stories: POV guy Marty the writer with Ed, the co-writer (not sexual, they’re both straight); Marty and an oboe player (she’s darling); Marty and the process of making live art; Marty and musical theater. Loved this, should be required reading for those who think AI can ever satisfactorily substitute for real art and also for those who need a reality check about democracy.

    5. [re-read] my own novella ‘Eternal Summer.’

    6. ‘Bookish’ by Matthew Sweet. Novelization of the TV series which he cowrites/cocreates with Mark Gattis. There’s a lot going on in this, and it requires concentration, but – even having not seen the series – I thought it was really clever, engaging, and satisfying.

    6.5 [re-read] my own short ‘Ember Cast.’

    7. ‘A Case of Life and Limb’ by Sally Smith. 2nd in series, Sir Gabriel Ward KC mysteries. Set 1901-1902 in Temple Inn. Gabriel continues to step out of his comfort zone and bond with Constable Wright while investigating gruesome prank deliveries and solving 3 old disappearances and a new murder.

  15. Best of the week for me was definitely “Death in the Spires” by KJ Charles (2024) which I finally got around to reading. There are romantic sub-plots but it’s really more about the impact of the decade-old murder on the group of friends and I really liked that restoring those friendships was a big part of the resolution. And I’d love a sappy epilogue *crosses fingers*.

    Very nearly as enjoyable was “Grief of Stones” by Katherine Addison (2022), #2 about Celehar. I love the way this series is about doing the right thing and making the world better a little at a time and that, and the thoroughly decent MC, is the delight of this book. I didn’t love it quite as much as #3 but still very good, and I was so happy to see the series nominated for a Hugo this year.

    “A Drop of Corruption” by Robert Jackson Bennet (2025) has similar themes re the importance of justice in holding a society together, and the value of rooting out corruption. While I don’t find the MMC quite as engaging as GOS, the characters were done well. Some elements were clunky, some were unpleasantly visceral but ultimately an interesting read and I’m planning to go back and read the first book.

    Re-read John Scalzi’s “Old Man’s War” (2005). For a military sf book inspired by Heinlein’s “Starship Troopers”, I was surprised marriage being such a theme. The MMC is a widower who at 75 joins the military (the earliest possible enlistment age) and keeps thinking about his late wife with whom he was meant to be undertaking this adventure. I have some quibbles, but this holds up very well and I’ll continue the series.

    Best of the short fiction this week was “The Isle of Beautiful Waters” by Lily Sejor (2025), set on a Carribean island with stories of the past and future. Free at https://grist.org/climate-fiction/imagine2200-the-isle-of-beautiful-waters/

    1. I might have to try Grief of Stones, Yuri. I’m desperate for fiction reading material, as finding those books in the mess has been fruitless, so far.

      1. Just finished it and I agree – I really like the way Scalzi works through the ethical issues he set up (and elided) in the first book.

  16. I read another Rachel Neumeir in the Tuyo series, Tasmakat. I have loved watching Ryo’s character develop from a war sacrifice to a warrior. And all in all a very satisfying end to this thread. I’m going to double back now and pick up some of the books that were side efforts to Ryo’s story.

    I also listened to Georgette Heyer’s Cotillion, which I haven’t read for a long time. I forgot how much I loved this book, the original fake dating book that gave birth to an entire rich trope. I forgot how much I loved the exquisite Freddy, who is not a rake but is much more sensible and action-oriented than all the so-called smart people around him. And for the first time, I saw what a great character Kitty is, with a kind heart and (eventually) clear vision of the people around her.

    1. Kitty grows up so much in that book but she has a strong moral core which is something I like in a main character 🙂 and Freddy is my favourite Heyer male character alongside Randall who is a completely different kettle of fish.

          1. Ah, I haven’t read any of her mystery series.

            Besides Freddy, I think my favourite characters are Sarah in The Talisman Ring, Horry in The Inconvenient Marriage, and Sophy in you know what.

          2. Sarah is up there for sure. So is Hector in the Unknown Ajax and cousin Gideon in the Foundling and while I am annoyed by his behavior at the start the hero in Arabella always wins my heart by seeing Arabella’s real character and talking to the dog and visiting her family.

          4. What I like about both Freddy and Randall is that they are not your typical athletic wholesome hero. I like my MC with a bit of difference.

      2. I preferred Gil in Friday’s Child, he was the relatively sensible one of the four friends and actually applied himself to helping Hero properly

          1. I know of that group Sherry was my least favourite and I actually preferred Ferdy to George. Even George was more thoughtful then Sherry

  17. I finished The Fabric of Civilization. Highly recommend it. I look at my clothes and my (untouched for years) crafts projects totally differently now. Also made me think about how the remnants of past times we have are not necessarily the most valuable kinds of objects — just the most durable.

    I reread Operation Mincemeat which was just as impressive as the first time. The operation itself of course was amazing; so are the quirky characters who pulled it off. The book is well researched and manages to get in lots of detail and still have forward momentum and is captivating (well it captured me anyway).

    I also read Finding Hester which is the first crowdsourced biography I have ever read and fun and impressive that this group of 20 or so Operation Mincemeat fans could produce it. Very thorough. Hester was the one character in the book and musical with very little known about her and obsessed fans researched her life, reconnected her family, and found her letters and diary.

    I am now reading both Heretic (not sure it’s my thing will report later but I still support the history of Mary whose flaming vagina burned off the hand of the woman who decided to test if she was really a virgin) and Double Cross (another Ben MacIntyre book) about the deception that helped set up the invasion of Normandy. It starts by saying that in 1943 the British head of double agents realized that every single German agent in Britain was under his control.

    I read last week’s (I think) New Yorker which had a summary of Popes that Trump might admire since he doesn’t admire this one, very cute. And a John McPhee piece with various childhood memories which was charming and far past the minimum bar of “at 95 it’s amazing he’s writing at all”. To find his age I checked Wikipedia which implies is also still teaching at Princeton. Further research suggests he stopped actually teaching a course at 90 but still guest teaches. He makes me feel very tired.

    Today I will be reading a summary of the privacy act and an assessment of what data the Department of Homeland Security Security shares with the Census. I am assuming that is not something you will want reports on.

    1. Thank you for the lead to Finding Hester. I downloaded it after your comment (last week?) and am really enjoying it. It makes sense that fans would obsess over her — not just cause she wasn’t as well known but also it was such a strong moment in the show. It still makes me tear up when I think about it (Jak Malone’s performance was the most memorable point in the whole show for me.)

      1. There are several versions of it on YouTube which I have watched. It’s so moving both in itself and because it reminds us all that the goal of their work was to bring as many people as possible home. It makes all the humor and lightness have more depth. Jak is amazing. I wonder how many other people got awards for the same role in both the London and Broadway production.

          1. Well he definitely deserved it! Amazing performance. All this discussion is making want to move our NYC trip up so I can see the whole show again sooner! 🙂

      1. Will make it as soon as I actually read it: if nothing else it will make me take a mental step back and give the overall impact.

  18. I’m waiting for Platform Decay to come from the library…which it will probably do next week when I’m out of town.

    I ran out of library books and had to resort to some ancient choices on my TBR shelf. Ended up reading Mira’s Last Dance, by Lois McMaster Bujold. It’s a novella in the Penric series, apparently the sequel to Penric’s Mission (according to the cover). I had read the first novels in the series and liked them. but it was so long ago, I didn’t have much memory of what happened, and I don’t know if I read the one that directly preceded this. I still enjoyed it a lot, and now I want to go back and start from the beginning. (Sadly, I’m pretty sure those books didn’t survive my last book purge, although the Miles books did, so I’ll have to get them from the library.) But mostly I want to find out what happens directly after this novella. Patrick, do you know which book comes next?

    1. Deborah, Unless something very recent isn’t yet listed, The Prisoner of Limnos is next both by internal chronology and publication order. I’ve found that the Google query, “[author’s name or series name] books in order” usually works. I usually then select the bookseriesinorder.com entry from the listed options.

  19. I finished reading Murderbot yesterday. It’s great! I recommend snacking on it between work sessions.
    Other than that, I reread Dogs and Goddesses. Currently I have my battered copy of The Unfortunate Miss Fortunes waiting for the nurse to finish up and let me read.

  20. Ugh, I ALSO am having to wait to read the new Murderbot because I need to finish the first draft of my WIP first. I’m so close. Maybe today. I’m only one week past my deadline despite not having factored abdominal surgery into my timeline. Not too bad.

  21. Dalton, Michael. DEEP DIVE: An Urban Fantasy Adventure (Coastal Curves Book 2) . I haven’t read book 1, but it’s in the TBR queue.

    I finished DARKLIGHT DARE by Bujold last Friday and enjoyed it muchly.

    I also got the notification that the new Murderbot had dropped into my Kindle account. PLATFORM DECAY is also in my TBR queue.

    Then there is the word opera. GW blogged that his international move has had delays, so book 7 has slipped from an April to a late June start date, so for my peace, I stopped following him. I’ll check in July. In the meantime, I’m still finishing the Book 6 reread. I’m at Chapter 112 of 163. (And they are not short chapters!)

    1. For anyone tired of hearing about the Word Opera, today is also the last time I mention it (unless asked) until Book 7 makes an appearance. Maybe not even then, nothing until it’s finished.

  22. I got a hardback copy of Platform decay last week and loved it. I had, of course, also preordered the ebook. And then listened on audio. I’ve been excessively attached to Murderbot for a bit over a year now. Anyway, I loved the new one, though it doesn’t cover new ground (except the literal ground of this torus thing).

    And also the new KJ Charles.

  23. This week’s read was Jane Harper’s “Last One Out”. This is billed as a mystery/procedural that takes place in a dying Australian bush town that is being taken over by a mining company. The MC returns to commemorate the life of her 21 year old son who had disappeared mysteriously from this town 5 years earlier. As always with Harper, the atmospherics were wonderful. But this book is less about discovering what happened to the MC’s son than it is a study in grief — grief at the loss of a child, grief over the breakdown of a marriage, grief over the loss of a town and community, and grief, grief, grief. While well written, it was slow and sad and not my thing. Specially as I went in expecting a Jane Harper bush town Australia procedural/mystery (I recognize that’s one on me — should have investigated further before reading!) There IS a mystery but the overhang of misery and the ponderous descriptions of every object mentioned — the trowel the son played with, the filing cabinets in the MC’s abandoned medical practice, etc. etc. each sparks too-long memories — felt like a slog to get through. YMMV.

    I DNF’d a few more hockey and/hockey adjacent books and then in order to “reset” I reread “Bet Me” for the bazillionth time and loved it again.

    The KDrama we are watching is a lot of fun — specially if you are a baseball fan: “Hot Stove League” is about a Korean baseball team. It’s sort of a Korean Ted Lasso and is fun and interesting. “Hot Stove” refers to the Off-season in baseball which is filled trades, trade rumors, teams undercutting each other to sign free agents, etc. There isn’t much baseball (yet) but lots of intrigue and battles of wits.

      2. “Iced Out” by CE Ricci and “Changing Lines” by RJ Scott and VL Locey and “Gravity” by Tal Bauer. It might have just been me but by 30% of each I just didn’t care about the MCs enough to continue.

        1. Yeah CE Ricci is hard no for me. I liked Changing Lines though, I confess and I read most of that series – it’s all on a downward trajectory from there though although I enjoy the cameos from the MC’s from the first one. Gravity I seem to remember as being Tal’s first hockey book and was just plain awful – didn’t understand hockey at all. And wasn’t that the one where the French Canadian guy kept saying things in French and then translating himself out loud? Who does that?? None of the French Canadians I know.

          1. There was so much wrong with Gravity — and I only got to the 30% mark when I decided enough was enough. And CE Ricci is now a hard no for me too. I thought the Changing Lines was just too bland to keep my interest. It is soooo hard to find anything that is even in the ballpark of the top 5 hockey writers. The search continues nevertheless — there MUST be other great ones out there that we have not discovered yet.

          2. Which would you consider the top give hockey authors?
            Fitzpatrick I guess and?

          3. Have any of you MM hockey romance fans who also like paranormal dipped into Victoria Sue’s Colorado Dragons series? 🙂 Jeff Adams (formerly of Big Gay Fiction Podcast) has mentioned it in his newsletter and it sounds … kind of appealingly bonkers.

          4. Chacha1,the dragon shifter/hockey Series ruely sounds crazy weird. But not weirder than the omegavetse hockey books I‘ve seen. Lol

        2. Devon Monk wrote a M/M hockey/fantasy/romance series with wizards and shapeshifters. I enjoyed the first book, haven’t yet read the second. Think the first one is called Hazard, and the second Spark? They predate the hockey craze.

  25. I listened to the The Unknown Ajax by Georgette Heyer.
    Light hearted and witty and also lovely narration by Thomas Judd.

    I re-read the Walker family series by Lauren Gilley, I believe these are her earlier books. For those of you who haven’t tried her books I warmly recommend them. A recurring message/theme in her books is that families come in all kinds of shapes and sizes.

  26. Read “The Anatomist’s Wife” which I liked well enough to buy after reading the sample. I finished it but my pleasure was diminished by author errors: using a phrase twice that was not in use in that era, using a phrase that was used in that era completely incorrectly, someone carrying two objects and opening doors without putting down either awkward object, another “a does not go with b” too complicated to explain, etc. Where was this person’s editor? It was disappointing, and all these things could have been easily rectified. Once I started seeing errors, I was more and more distracted, and so likely to see any small problem. Other people may get swept up in the interesting premise and characters, so if it sounds good to you, don’t let me put you off just because my research says people did not “figure it out” in 1828.

    Also read “Bedside Manner” suggested here. Despite the characters’ issues, it was a romp. It made me laugh out loud. The medical stuff sounded impressive and perhaps accurate. The sex isn’t too annoying. The big crisis is endurable. Character growth and the end was satisfying, can’t ask for more.

    1. I don’t think I would have spotted that anachronism although many others have bothered me in historical works. “Sibling,” coined in anthropology circa 1900 and not in general use until circa 1980, still annoys the heck out of me, or “with he and I,” not in use by the educated until probably post-2000. At times I have to remind myself that the idea is merely to get the flavor of period speech right. The full bore product would perhaps be too hard to understand (I can read Jane Austen pretty fluently but anything much older slows me down) and would be beyond the ability of most authors to write.

      “Puzzle it out,” per the internet, would have been a substitute within period.

    2. Your comment about the awkward objects makes me think of sex scenes where someone must have grown a third hand because otherwise, it makes no sense 🙂

      1. The hero of Bujold’s Sharing Knife, having lost one of his two hands, uses a psychokinetic one in the sex scenes. Probably that has been done somewhere for a third hand too. Some characters, particularly in straight fantasy, use prehensile tails, and there are the ever popular tentacles.

        1. Yeah, that one is gine. In fact Dag’s invisible hand is a big plot device. My gripe is with badly written non paranormal sex scenes 🙂

    3. The medical stuff was a big plus for me in Bedside Manner. I’ve no idea if it was accurate but it came across as if the author really knew what they were talking about.

  27. Following Gary+Hayenga’s recommendation I read Death Scent by D L Keur
    the first in a series of K9 novels. Really enjoyed it. Nice family who train dogs in a small town. Town Sheriff out of his depth. MFC is a search and rescue ex-cop and it was a great story. Going to keep reading this series. Thank you for the recommendation.

    When I bought it off Amazon (D L Keur self publishes) Amazon recommended Lone Wolf by Sara Driscoll. I didn’t enjoy that nearly as much, it felt cold and all about the MFC (not a team, though she was part of one). Written by a two writers co-authoring and it felt like it wasn’t a whole person. Jenny and Bob co-author so well, each taking a character and making a whole coherent story, which has obviously spoiled me because this felt nothing like that.

    Also read Mr Grady’s Grand Tour by Alan Titchmarsh. A widowed farther takes himself off on an adventure to Europe, and it was about art, family, and the people he met along the way, as well as the family he left behind. Really enjoyed it.

    Other than that some re-reads (comfort reads) from my shelves and a pile of DF’s from the library.

    Going to see The Sheep Detectives at the cinema tomorrow. This is from Three Bags Full by Leonie Swann. The trailer looks great, so fingers crossed. When everyone here was raving about the book it was not in the library and the on-line copies were too pricey for me, so I haven’t read it yet. But now the movie is coming out there are several copies in the library system and I am on a waiting list. The movie is only on a very short release (less than a week) as it is going to be streaming almost immediately I think.

  28. It’s one heck of a ride, this new Murderbot. It’s some time after the last book, and starts fast and keeps going. I liked it and am rereading it already now that I know what’s coming and can breathe. And Three is in it!

  29. Thank you all for new book ideas. I am in a funk because all my best rereads are buried in the pile of boxes and etm. I need to unpack all that, but I also need cheering up, and time to sit and rest.

    I read the invoice the plumber gave me after he fixed the lack of water in the guest tub. It was not riveting, but the price was. I feel like I’m in “The Money Pit”. I keep finding things the former resident left in very poor condition. How the inspector missed no water for the tub, I don’t know. It needed a new cartridge for the shower. ??

    The seat cover on the master toilet is so flimsy, I’m afraid to use it. I want to get a slow-closing, more hefty one, but that is $75! It’s hard to spring for that, although it will be a good thing to have.

    The copies of Murderbot that I saved are also in the pile. I stopped reading at about mid-point, so will have to go to the used book store to get the ones I did not buy before.

    The pets are settling in, and I got most of the way through assembling the automatic cat litter box until it got to the time for the tiny little screws. My son says he will come by soon to do that part. I had to move the boxes into the living room, next to the patio door, because I was sure the plumber would not want to work with them there in the tub.

    I will be smudging the entire house and patio today, hoping to get rid of the evil spirits. They came to empty the garbage dumpsters at 9:30 this morning. That’s an improvement! Twice a week is good, too. The dumpsters fill up fast.

    1. I feel you on the money pit, Jan. 24 years in my house and there is still always something. Good thing I love it. (And got it pretty cheap in the first place.)

      1. I have followed your progress with the old house, Deborah, and it seems like a real trial. But you have added improvements that make it sound very livable. That is my goal. Maybe I will check on solar tubes for the dark living room. The kitchen has a large skylight, which is wonderful.

        1. Honestly, I don’t see it as a trial, although home ownership is definitely the gift that keeps on giving. Although I don’t love repairing things (especially the weird stuff that shows up every time we open a wall), I do love making improvements, so the house is better all the time. I figure by the time it’s mostly done, I’ll probably end up moving somewhere else.

    2. Jan, Unless your eye problems have improved you may not want to use ebooks, but per its website, the Phoenix Public Library also has e-audiobooks both in their own collection and through Hoopla, and people can register for an electronic library card remotely. I hope that in one way or another you can also get to a library in person fairly regularly. Books should not have to come entirely out of your own budget.

    3. Maybe there is a Restore or salvaged home goods store near you? Granted, you can’t always find what you need when you want it, but a lot of my faucets and fixtures have been found used. The price of everything jumped so much in the last year I think I have a permenant wince.

    4. Jan, so sorry you are having get things fixed that should have been noticed on inspection prior to your purchase.

      Smudging sound like a good plan, I got my current home smudged when I first moved in and one of the neighbours came to say hello and noticed the difference as soon as she entered. “What have you done!” she said excitedly.

      Two things I have always done when buying a new place (three flats in 40+ years) is change the locks and replace the toilet seats. It seems a really personal thing a toilet seat, the locks are a security thing. Neither one are cheap but I feel are worth it.

  30. Jan I am so sorry about all the glitches! Not what you need when you need peace and quiet to recover from the move and settle in. But I’m glad it does sound like they are remediable and not too expensive. How are you feeling about the house once they are addressed? Serviceable? Comfortable? A pleasure to be there?

    1. Debbie, I think I will enjoy the walled patio, once I get some potted and dug-in plants there. There are two trees on the edge, which is a rarity, and provides shade. Once I figure out the cupboards and find most of my stuff, if should be livable. The new appliances are great! The old ones were from the 70’s. I got a newer electric stove without the fancy glass top, as the new ones are too magnetic. However, when I open the side-by-side fridge, the edge grabs my medical bracelet. Magnets are ubiquitous, now!

      1. I’m so glad you will enjoy the patio. I think it makes such a difference to have a place that fits your mood and personality.

  31. Also consider Alibris for used books. I found that if I wanted several and bought them all from the same source I only paid one shipping fee which was nice.

  32. Managed to read Islands of Chaldea by Ursula Jones completing her sister’s work. This one is a good read, can feel DWJ’s world that it was set in. Then Murder in Williamstown by Kerry Greenwood, which is a later book after the gap in years, so the continuity is a little bit off I feel from the ones from before, just tiny details that are wrong from the older books, still worth a read

  33. I haven’t read the newest Murderbot yet, but it is coming. My son offered it to me as a gift – he knows I like the series.
    Read Carla Kelly’s Beau Crusoe. It was a so-so historical romance. Someone mentioned it on this blog, so I decided to give it a try. The idea behind the plot was solid, even fascinating, but the execution was weak. It was a struggle to finish it.
    Not reading but book-related: I went to a local cinema to watch Project Hail Mary. Didn’t like it: too much of the screen time was dedicated to special effects, and not enough to the character himself. I doubt I would like the book either. I just canceled my hold on it at our library. But I’m obviously in the minority here: my hold # was 482 – that many people wanted to read it after the movie came out. Frankly, I didn’t like Andy Weir’s The Martian either. I did try to read that book when it came out and DNFed it. Not my sort of writer, obviously.
    An interesting tidbit about Hail Mary: the actor’s name is Ryan Gosling and he played the character named Ryland Grace. I wonder if the similarity in names is accidental. Maybe the author likes the actor and named his protagonist as a sort of tribute. Just speculating …

    1. I think Beau Crusoe is one of her weaker ones.
      I like The Lady’s Companion and The Wedding Journey and Libby’s London Merchant and Mrs Drew Plays her Hand and Miss Grimsley’s Oxford Career. I really like Marian’s Christmas wish but I pretend the heroine is older than 16.

    2. “Project Hail Mary” wasn’t my favourite either – the book, haven’t seen the film. I found it a fast engaging read but the more I thought about it afterwards the more it fell apart. OTH I rather liked the film “The Martian” – didn’t read the book.

      1. Yuri, Fell apart as in “logic gaps became obvious”? I haven’t seen that as a general criticism, except for some fairly esoteric math problems that reportedly would be easily fixable. So some other meaning of “fell apart”?

        1. Logic gaps, the underlying assumptions about the way the world works, the ethical issues that are elided etc etc etc.

          1. Yuri, You are entitled to your own reaction to the book, but I question some of the reasons you advance, and I wonder if they could result from misremembering the actual book, which was pretty carefully written. You specify no logic gaps, nor, as I said, has anyone else that I’ve seen found major ones. I grant you that in the real world it is unlikely that nations would work together rather than hand-wringing to our mutual deaths, but I took that as part of the initial setup requiring suspension of disbelief and it’s a pretty common one in sf. Ethical issues are often mentioned even if barreled past and seem to me to be the sort of moral flaws often encountered even from the good guys in genre novels, so that if one objects to the depiction here one would have to object to a lot of contemporary fiction.

          2. Hi Patrick, I don’t have the maths or science for those gaps to have bothered me but there are plenty of people who have: Peter Watts at https://www.rifters.com/crawl/?p=11659 for one.

            Yes, some of my issue was the totally unrealistic global politics and I’m not alone in that – for other critiques see Arturo Serrano on Nerds of a Feather (re the film) or Alison Scott on Octothorpe back when it was Hugo nominated. Whether or not I’m able to suspend disbelief depends on how much I enjoy the book and my enjoyment of PHM wasn’t enough to suspend my disbelief past the end of the book. I get that plenty of people love it and that’s totally OK, I’ve certainly read books I liked less that were also very popular. IMHO there is no objective standard for a good book – for me PHM was an effective page-turner that was ultimately disappointing.

          3. Yuri, I agree that tastes very. You will recall that this started when I questioned only your statement that the novel “fell apart” on reflection. Since you admit having, no more than I do, the math or science to spot the problems there, I doubt that those could have been why, in retrospect, the novel “fell apart” for you, and as I said, I am told that there are ways they could have been fixed, usually the sign of only a minor flaw. I read the Watts article up to the point where he said he hadn’t read the book. I haven’t seen the movie, and obviously any novel is going to have better justified science than any book. He’s right that, as is nearly inevitable in sf, Rocky is unrealistically un-alien in psychology.

            Likely I was pushing too hard on the phrase “fell apart.” I’ve certainly had a reaction of finding a book gripping while I was reading but pointless when I finished, but for me I generally think of that as a cotton-candy book that more dissolves or evaporates than falls apart. But people differ in their psychologies.

          4. Oops. I think that all of my poor phrasings are decipherable, but the worst is “than any book” where context requires “than any movie.” Sorry for the sloppiness.

          5. LOL Patrick, I think your math & science is a lot better than mine!

            I’m much more likely to feel a book “fell apart” due to problems with character or plot than inaccuracies. I think also that everyone is going to have different things that jar them out of the narrative – mine include books that portray torture as effective, protagonists who smoke, and the idea it would be easier to terraform an alien planet rather than restore Earth’s ecology. An author can get me past all those but the rest of the book really needs to speak to me.

    3. Olga, I am with you on disliking The Martian. It was a DNF for me, though I gave it one star because I thought the idea was terrific even if the execution was appalling. I haven’t bothered with any other of his books.

  34. I wasn’t convinced by Alexis Hall’s Something Extraordinary, though I agree it’s better than the previous book. I’m giving up on his historicals – they’re too farcical and I don’t believe in the characters. There’s more anachronism than historical setting, which can get very distracting (how can the hero be a baronet if his father’s still alive; and there’s no indication he was knighted instead? Why do they go to Gretna Green when they’re both of age and could be married anywhere via special licence or banns?) So I don’t believe the world either. Hall really is hit-and-miss: he’s one of my favourite authors, and yet has written quite a few stories that just don’t work for me.

    I was then excited to discover a good new author – Jodi McAlister, An Academic Affair. I thought this was excellent, although it dipped a bit at the end, possibly because she was laying the ground for future related stories. I felt the dramatic resolution dissipated slightly. I’m going to try her other titles in a bit.

    1. I tried his latest historical and gave up on it for now. It was on the opposite end from farcical, instead full of darkness and despair. He really does struggle with a middle ground in the historicals, doesn’t he? Of course I didn’t like CM Nascosta’s historical either. Funny how setting can make such a difference.

      1. Yes. At the same time a historical that is well done can be so compelling. I think Connie Brockway‘s My Dearest Enemy, where FMC doesn’t want to marry for good historical reasons and MMC does for equally good reasons is a great example.

    2. Unless for severe time pressure, I see no reason that banns would not usually serve. On the other hand, per websites for Regency writers that I’ve looked at, a special license was far more of a hassle than most authors make it out to be. Very expensive and only the Archbishop of Canterbury could issue it, and historically almost never did so in the Regency. Any bishop, however, could issue an “ordinary license,” which in many situations would have been just as good. It basically cut through some of the red tape involved in marriage with banns. (I have read a few Regencies where the author to her credit, did have the protagonist jump through the proper hoops to get a special license. )

      See for instance,
      Marriage in Regency England-Licenses and special licenses – Donna Hatch https://share.google/SFAjcNp1qTrxM4QGU

    3. Jane, Alexis Hall is very hit and miss for me, too. Much like the little girl who had a little curl, when he is good, he is very very good …

      I also really loved An Academic Affair. I tried another one of hers after that, which I didn’t particularly like, mainly because the setup wasn’t interesting. But I will definitely look out for the next one in the academic affair series.

      1. Yes: I just tried a sample of a story set in a reality TV show and didn’t fancy that world. The characters didn’t grab me in the same way.

  35. I’ve started Paladin’s Strength, with Archangel’s Eternity and the latest Murderbot waiting in the wings.

    Usually, I don’t have so many books arrive all at the same time.

    1. Paladin’s Strength is my favorite Paladin book. So funny, clever, and kind. I remember watching women’s heavyweight wrestling at the Paris Olympics, and thinking “oh, so THAT’S what Clara looks like.”

  36. Actually, if you are still looking for series with characters that continue over the books, the Archangel series by Nalini Singh might be interesting. The two main characters aren’t to focus of every book, but a lot of them, and their relationship grows and changes over the series.

  37. I read UNKNOWN DEPTHS, Celia Lake’s newest Albion cozy fantasy. It was fine, but I expected it to turn into a new favorite, and it didn’t.

    I really like the Albion novels, which are as warm and relaxing as a nice cup of tea. They’re set in a magical alternative England, from Victorian to late 1940s, but mostly between the wars. There’s minimal conflict, usually characters from very different backgrounds with war-related physical, mental, and/or economic challenges coming together to solve a problem and finding a future together. The setting could be a trade like shoemaking, theatre, jet jewelry, weaving, or a profession like law, or the land (horses, apples, bees, brewing), or an aristocratic wrangle, all with magic involved. Often there’s a social divide to be bridged. There are no big misunderstandings—the characters address their differences fairly and honestly. The books are intelligent, principled, kind, and make a very pleasant escape from reality.

    UNKNOWN DEPTHS is set in and around Orkney, with an Orcadian selkie hero and an assertive, aristocratic, portal-tending heroine with Indian heritage and surprising magical talents. I liked everything about this setup, and the way the characters joined forces to solve a mysterious problem in the hero’s home waters. I have really enjoyed other Albion books with a privileged, clever, connected heroine and a hero with remarkable but undervalued insights and skills, low social cachet and no wealth to speak of (like PERFECT ACCORD, posh girl teams up with perfumer). In those books I loved the way the plot allowed the hero to shine. I could see what the heroine saw in the hero, and vice versa. This time around, the escalation and resolution of the plot drew on the heroine’s many skills and valuable connections, relegating the hero to supporting cast and unbalancing the relationship. With an Orcadian mystery plot centered around the hero this book would have worked much better for me. I still love the series though, and will almost certainly buy whatever Celia Lake writes next.

    1. I read it too and it won’t be a favourite for me either. I absolutely love the first two in that series so I reread them right after I finished Unknown Depth
      and I am still reading other favourites several days later because I always hate leaving Albion!

      Celia Lake’s plots often don’t make much sense for me. Sometimes I think they work, sometimes they don’t but honestly I don’t mind, I love spending time in her world and as long as she keeps writing I’ll read whatever she publishes!

  38. Thanks to Chacha1 for recommending Bedside Manner by CG Macington. It was funny and cute and I really enjoyed it. My only criticism is that I felt as if it would’ve been better as a longer book. It dealt with huge emotional shifts, and the change and those felt a bit rushed. But still a good read.

    Also thanks to Penelope for recommending Dog On It Spencer Quinn. Narrated by Chet, the food obsessed canine partner of a private detective, it is hilarious and wonderful.

    Others this week: Mrs Pollifax and the Hong Kong Buddha which was as delightful as all the Mrs Pollifax books are. And the first two books in Josh Lanyon’s Art Crime series, which I like better than the Adrien English series, but still struggle with her fondness for emotionally unavailable men.

      1. I didn’t actually find it very gory, Jane. Or maybe I don’t mind gore if it’s in a medical context – I certainly don’t like it in other contexts.

  39. Aaarrrrrgggghhhh! I share a kindle account with a friend, whose taste in books overlaps with mine (not 100%, but more often than not), and she preordered the new MB, which we both love in audio, and it’s RIGHT THERE on the “to be downloaded” screen of my Kindle, except it won’t download! It starts to, and the little download icon goes around and around to show it’s connected to the servers and the download has begun, and then five seconds later it stops, and the file stays in “queued” indefinitely.

    So I’ve got it, tantalizingly close, but just out of reach!

    It’s apparently a known glitch in the latest software updates, where longer files go into queue limbo indefinitely. It’s the talk of the reader forums, complaining about it, and yet, customer service claims not to know anything about it. There are some workarounds (mostly restarting and/or disconnecting from wifi and reconnecting), which are annoying, but some readers have been able to use to get the download, but none of them have worked for me.

    So tomorrow Imma figure out how to download it to my phone instead. No time to do it earlier today and I exhausted myself with other stuff this afternoon, so I don’t have enough functional braincells (or patience) to do techie stuff tonight. Fortunately, I’ve been re-reading (audio) the CS Harris Sebastian St. Cyr series, and it’s riveting enough to keep me from constantly thinking, “I could be listening to Kevin R. Free and Murderbot instead.”

    Still, I’m feeling a lot of empathy for Tantalus. Not sure what I’ve done to upset the gods, but it feels like they’ve been punishing me in a lot of little ways this week!

    2. This problem with downloads has been happening a lot – most books I buy on my Kindle I have to restart the Kindle in order for the book to download. Once it restarts, though, the new purchase is there.

      1. (My process is: buy the book from my Kindle – having finished the sample; the download hangs; close that window to return to my library and tap the book thumbnail to download it; that too hangs, so I restart the Kindle and then find the downloaded book is sitting there, ready for me to continue reading.)

      2. Me too. Restarting is annoying, but always works. ALWAYS hangs up when I buy from sample, almost never if I buy from kindle store but not from sample.

      3. Unfortunately, restarting doesn’t work for me. I’ve tried it about a dozen times. It works for ebooks, but not for audio.

        1. I didn’t realize you were talking about audiobooks. Hope you can find a solution. As you say, Amazon don’t seem to be doing anything about the problem.

          1. That’s what bugs me the most — it’s ALL OVER various reading communities, with summaries of unsuccessful convos with customer service reps who claim to have never heard of the problem (from other users OR from AMZ itself), and it’s timed pretty clearly to a recent software update, but it’s crickets from AMZ. Mine is more extreme (no download at all), but it’s hardly good customer service to tell readers, “oh, yeah, we messed up the software, and now you have to reboot every time you buy a new book.”

  40. I’ve started The Fabric of Civilization. Thank you, Debbie, for the rec! I’ve started Murderbot and finished Penric. I think all my reading this week came from things I heard about here.

  41. I finally finished Midnight Timetable: A Novel in Ghost Stories, which was more interesting than thrilling to me. (It took a while because I tried to only read one story on any one day.) Most of the ghost stories were fairly quiet and distant and observed, and after finishing, I wished that I’d read the endnote first, because it had a definition of ghost stories that illuminated what the author was trying to do… but maybe it’s better not to know that ahead of time. Hard to say, but it definitely left me thinking.

      1. I’ve never read anything like it! Belle Burden can write like no one else. I know I’m reading her point of view. I don’t understand why he left.

  44. Another update:

    I think I told you all that I got an address people could send birthday cards to?

    We found contact info for mom’s two sisters so I decided to call them to give them the address. I was pretty hesitant because I had met them only once at the wedding 34 years ago. And because as her sisters while I knew they had had some fights I thought they might be basically on her side or hesitant to take steps against her . But by the same token if they would speak against her it would be really telling. A birthday card address seemed to be a good door opener.

    Well, they were thrilled to hear from me. Like us they wanted to report her to protective services but couldn’t find an address. I connected them with Protective Services and they sent an email that said among other things
    “We’ve feared for years [mom] was slowly killing her. [mom] has been mentally unstable for a very long time.”

    More team daughter! I am so happy. Makes it very clear this is not just divorce bitterness.

    2. It’s really great Debbie that you’ve found more allies by taking the chance to reach out. Solidarity is a really powerful thing 🙂

About the Author

Jennifer Crusie is the New York Times, USA Today, and Publisher’s Weekly bestselling author and co-author of twenty-three novels, one book of literary criticism, miscellaneous articles, essays, novellas, and short stories, and the editor of three essay anthologies. She lives in a cottage in Pennsylvania, where she often stares at the ceiling and counts her blessings.

Find out more about Jenny’s published works by visiting JennyCrusie.com

Recent Comments
Archives
Categories