Let’s see… I finished up a reread of Buckeye by Patrick Ryan for a book group. Really excellent fiction. Someone complained to me some time ago that there aren’t that many “normal books” getting published anymore, that everything’s “weird.” Well, Buckeye is definitely an old-fashioned, everyman, small-town book. It’s exceptionally well-done & I highly recommend it. After that was Happy Land by Dolen Perkins-Valdez for our discussion here, which is now open (as of about 5 minutes ago).
Currently reading The Man in the High Castle by Philip K. Dick for our 1000 Books Before You Die Side Read (and anyone’s welcome to join us at any time, if you’re interested). After that, I’d like to get to Annelise Ryan’s Working Stiff. She’s the author of the Monster Hunter series (we discussed her Beast of the North Woods not that long ago). Working Stiff is the first volume in a different series she wrote featuring Mattie Winston (which is up to 12 entries!). Annelise will be here starting March 11 for a Q&A. And then it’s on to The Seven O’Clock Club by Amelia Ireland for our online book discussion here.
In audiobook, I paused my 20-volume space opera series to read Lily King’s Writers & Lovers. If you’ve read Heart the Lover, you know there’s a gap of maybe 20 years in the middle of the novel. Well, that’s because she wrote that middle section first, in Writers & Lovers, and Heart the Lover serves as both a prequel and a sequel. We’re talking to Lily now, and interestingly, she didn’t plan it that way. She just started writing and suddenly realized the character was the same character, just at a different point in her life. That really surprised me. Anyway, almost done with that, then I’m back to the space opera.