Sunshine and warm weather. Working in the garden: staking, removing two shrubs that didn’t survive the winter, weeding, trimming. Trips to the our regular nursery, trips to other nurseries, planning, planting, feeding, mulching… who has time for reading?
So I have the same couple of books holding bookmarks as last week, In the Labyrinth of Drakes by Marie Brennan and Edmund Hamilton’s Captain Future yarn, in Quest Beyond The Stars. I did read Sergeant Cluff Stands Firm, by Gil North, which was my Friday Forgotten Book last week. You can read that here, or just scroll down one post.
Mostly what I’ve been reading is more of Raoul Whitfield’s Jo Gar stories. Whitfield wrote just one Gar novel, The Rainbow Diamonds, which is made up of several short stories, each beginning right where the previous left off. I’d read the set before, but I’m enjoying it again as I’m mostly through them. After that, there will still be other Gar stories in the Altus Press collection I have, and as I’m enjoying it, I’ll probably just read the collection right through.
Barbara also has been in the garden, and working some jigsaw puzzles, soaking in the nice weather, so she’s enjoying Good To the Last Kiss by Ronald Tierney, but reading time has been limited.
So how about you?
What have you been reading?
Tip the Wink 
Read All Systems Red by Martha Wells. A SF short novel from Tor.com. I enjoyed it. Also read Spook Street by Mick Herron. The 4th in his Slough House novels. It was a lot of fun. I liked the 1st 2 in series but couldn’t get into the 3rd one. Probably not in the right mood. Reread Cugel’s Saga one of my favorite Jack Vance books. About 80 pages into the new Gregory Benford, The Berlin Project. A alternative history featuring mostly real people. Liking it so far. Early in his career Benford wrote some very fine works like Timescape. Hadn’t read anything of his for awhile.
I have trouble with a lot of old pulp stuff like Captain Future. I think it’s mostly the bad dialogue. Nothing will turn me off a book like dialogue that causes me to winch while reading it.
It’s interesting that I read reviews of books in various places, and then on Mondays one of the commentors here says they have read/are reading/just finished one or more of those same books. The Wells is an example.
I took a class, in the early Eighties at University of California, Irvine from Benford and Niven. I’d graduated long since (from University of Arizona) but took the class “no credit” just to hear the lectures. It was very interesting.
I have that problem with a lot of pulp stuff too, but wanted to try these. So far, kinda meh.
I finished only three books this week. Bill Crider’s SURVIVORS WILL BE SHOT AGAIN is a Dan Rhodes mystery so you now it’s good. Douglass Wallop’s baseball fantasy THE YEAR THE YANKEES LOST THE PENNANT was a pleasant little book and the source for the musical DAMN YANKEES. John Connolly’s THE CREEPS was the third adventure of Samuel Johnson and his dog Boswell — a flat-out funny story about demons, elves, evil eyeballs, larcenous dwarfs, and the possible end of the multiverse as we know it. The rest of my reading has been with various short stories. I found 26 of the 30 NEW WRITINGS IN SF volumes edited by John Carnell (and later by Kenneth Bulmer) available on Internet Archive, so I’m having a good time dipping into those.
We’ve had six beautiful days and one day with the storm from Hell. The rain was driving so hard it was forced under our threshold and started flooding the living room. We caught it in time but I foresee some caulking in my very near future. Glad you’re enjoying time in your garden. Take care.
Sorry about the rain invasion. After several nice days, today will be 93, which for me is sheer hell. My comfort zone is 68-78.
I read your FFB, I’ve seen the film, but that’s the extent of it. I haven’t gotten to that Crider yet, I’m behind on the series. Both his series, in fact. Cool that you found those NWinSF books.
Reading John Scalzi’s THE GHOST BRIGADES, a book in the Old Man’s War universe that I somehow skipped when it originally appeared.
I like those books and have reread the whole set, plus have them on ebook to read again.
I read THE YEAR THE YANKEES LOST THE PENNANT originally in one of my mother’s 3-in-1 Readers Digest Book Club editions. As a Yankee fan I didn’t like the outcome, of course, but then in my first 16 years of life they won the pennant an unbelievable 14 times, so who can complain?
I’ve mostly been reading a boatload of short stories. Besides the previously mentioned Saki collection and that Crime & Music anthology, which turned out as uneven as you said, I’ve been reading 3 or 4 stories a day in these:
Walter Tevis, FAR FROM HOME (SF, originally 1957-80)
Lee Child, NO MIDDLE NAME: The Complete Collected Jack Reacher Stories (including one when Reacher was 13 on Okinawa; very enjoyable so far)
Patrick Millikin, THE HIGHWAY KIND: Tales of Fast Cars, Desperate Drivers, and Dark Roads (all new stories, by Michael Connelly, James Sallis, George Pelecanos, Wallace Stroby, etc.)
Then there is: Pamela Paul, MY LIFE WITH BOB: Flawed Heroine Keeps Book of Books, Plot Ensues, which has been written about by others.
And then, unfortunately, several ebooks I had on hold at the library came in one after another. I am currently reading Jodie Taylor’s second Chronicles of St.Mary’s book (time travel), A SYMPHONY OF ECHOES.
The others waiting are:
Caitlin R. Keirnan, AGENTS OF DREAMLAND
Jonathan Maberry, PATIENT ZERO
Becky Chambers, A CLOSED AND CONSTANT ORBIT
And yes, I have other library books as well.
*sigh*
And that’s why Dodger fans hated the Yankees.
I have 2 ebooks from the library: Bug Hunt (an Aliens short story collection) and that SF space opera book which runs out tomorrow, though I already read it, so I guess it doesn’t count. I’ll be interested in your opinion of CLOSED AND CONSTANT ORBIT.
Also, we had another show on Broadway yesterday, A DOLL’S HOUSE, Part 2 – set 15 years after the original play. We walked the three blocks from 42nd to 45th Street where the psycho drove at 60 mph down the sidewalk and marveled that only one person was killed.
I forgot. I also read CONVICTION by Julia Dahl, third in her series about young reporter Rebekah Roberts, here trying to right a 22-year old injustice and free a wrongly convicted man. I liked the current scenes more than the flashbacks.
And I got the Penguin reprint of MAIGRET’S FIRST CASE, the thirteenth I’ve picked up from PaperbackSwap.com so far.
We had three straight days of 90+ temperatures – the first time it has happened in May since 2001 – followed by a return to the low 60s. Good thing there’s no such thing as climate change.
93 here today after a mild few days in he 70s. I really hate hot weather. I will be inside with the air running all day. I’ll address the books and reading later, I have a nasty headache.
We’re back from our visit to GOOGLE Land. There’s a stack of newspapers and mail demanding our attention! I have five Library books due in three days. Yikes!
Been working on a few short story anthologies lately
Old Cape Magic by Richard Russo (I hope). Been in another reading slump after LETTERMAN.
The only book of his I’ve even heard of is Empire Falls. From what little I know, an interesting writer.
Russo is a pretty good writer. Besides Empire Falls he also wrote Nobodys Fool which was made into a pretty good movie with Paul Newman. Among his better books I would also include Straight Man and The Risk Pool. I have his last novel Everybodys Fool on my TBR pile.
I read Murder… Now and Then by Jill McGown. She is one of my favorite authors and it was a re-read.
Also read Indemnity Only by Sara Paretsky, her first book in the V.I. Warshawski series.
Now reading The Last Billable Hour by Susan Wolfe, a legal mystery from 1989.
I read the first Warshawski ages ago, and at the time wondered what all the fuss was about. I don’t think I ever went back to that series, but one of the early female private detectives so there was much talk of “groundbreaking” and gender barrier” and such. I prefer Muller.
As in Marcia Muller, who writes the Sharon McCone mysteries.
I prefer Margaret Millar but Paretsky is a solid writer who manages to be socially relevant in almost every book.
From the little I have read of each, I prefer Millar too, but I was curious about Paretsky, and want to try more of her books too. However, there are quite a few and I have tons of other books, so who knows how much farther I will read in that series. I have 6 or 7 more books by Millar to read, then I have to go searching for more.
Millar is my favorite also. read one Paretsky and found it okay but didn’t compel me to read any more. Thought Grafton was also better in this vein.
and Marcia Muller,
Let me add my two cents. I read one Paretsky. I didn’t like it and wouldn’t read another. I read Grafton for a while, but I was getting less from each book and more annoyed at Kinsey’s idiotic (my word) personal behavior. I quit ‘M’.
Yes to Marcia Muller. Sharon McCone has grown and changed tremendously as a character and the books have been must-reads for me for years. I’ve read more of her books than any other woman crime writer other than Agatha Christie (48 at last count).
And I like Jill McGown and Cynthia Harrod-Eagles a lot, among British women writers.
I had the same experience with Marcia Muller as others have had with Paretsky, read one of hers and did not continue. I should probably try more books by both authors before I decide how I like them. Even Bill Pronzini in 1001 Midnights described Muller’s first three books as “rough-edged books, good but flawed.” He reviewed Leave a Message for Willie and also recommended the next book, There’s Nothing to be Afraid of. Maybe I will try one of those
I also like Cynthia Harrod-Eagles, especially the first seven or eight books.
Harris-Eagles, another author I’m behind on.
I agree, Jeff, with all you said, including the Brits.