Monday Malarkey

Almost September! Who is feeling just a little bit woozy from the quick passage of time? Here's hoping that the rest of 2016 is a little calmer than what we've experienced, so far.

New arrivals:

• Killfile by Christopher Farnsworth - from HarperCollins for review

Yes, just one book arrived, this week! Good. Needed to even out the influx after last week's arrivals. OK, having just finished that sentence, two more books arrived - both books that I ordered:

• Easy Street by Ron Perlman - Who, surprisingly, follows me on Twitter. I suspect he followed me because I'm a book blogger, although his book was not yet at press when he did so and nobody offered his book to me (unless I missed an offer, somewhere - sometimes they do disappear into the spam file and I never see them; I don't check the spam file often enough). At any rate, the book sounded interesting from the beginning and has gotten very positive reviews so curiosity won out. 
• A Gathering of Old Men by Ernest J. Gaines - My F2F group's November selection.

Books finished since last Malarkey:

• 14 Seconds to Hell by Nick Carter - Nick Carter is the spy in 14 Seconds to Hell but if you try to look up the book, he's billed as the author. The copyright is held by the publisher so there's no telling who wrote the book. At any rate, it's a crazy 60s-era pulp fiction spy thriller. 
• Kid Artists by Stabler and Horner - Mini bios about artists when they were young, already reviewed. 

Currently reading:

• A Square Meal by Coe and Ziegelman - I made some significant progress on A Square Meal, last night, and have decided I need to get going on finishing this book so I can move on to a couple other non-fiction titles that have been waiting a bit too long. Still enjoying it. Learning to loathe President Hoover for refusing to distribute food to citizens who were literally starving to death. His talking points remind me a bit of Paul Ryan's. 
• Wonder Women by Sam Maggs - A book about women who have made major contributions, particularly in the science, technology, engineering and math fields but with a few others thrown in. Very modern and accessible, stylistically. I'm enjoying this book. I asked my husband if he knew the first computer program was written by a woman and he said, "Was her name Ada something?" "Yes," I replied. He told me there's a computer language named after her, "It's not a very good language, though." Many of the women in this book worked unpaid or were not credited for their discoveries. They were also treated rather badly, although if one was fortunate enough to have a male championing her skills, the situation typically improved.
• Commonwealth by Ann Patchett - Patchett's new to me and I'm impressed. Commonwealth is the story of several generations of a combined family and how the divorce and remarriage that blended their families reverberated through the generations. I can't even figure out why it's so compelling; it just is. I think maybe it's because the storytelling is so honest, the characters true to life in a way that makes you visualize them as real people, not just characters. I'm a little under halfway through Commonwealth.
• Intimations: Stories by Alexandra Kleeman - A book of quirky short stories. I read the first one and found it so baffling that I looked up an interview with the author about the story, "Fairy Tale", which was originally published in The Paris Review. I still don't get it. It was more eerily reminiscent of a nightmare than a fairy tale, to me (at least, it reminded me of some of my own nightmares). Elsewhere, someone described her stories as allegories. Truly, I may just be too dim to understand what she's trying to say. I'll keep going, though. 

Last week's posts:

• Crooked Heart by Lissa Evans - F2F Report (a recap of my book group's discussion)
• The Woman in the Photo by Mary Hogan (book review)
• Fiona Friday - Concerned face (cat photo) 
• Kid Artists by Stabler and Horner (book review)

In other news:

I'm not entirely prepared to declare my reading slump over for good but it sure appears to be done. I typically balance 3-5 books when I'm reading at my normal rate and right now 4 books have bookmarks in them. That's just about right. I'm feeling very upbeat about my reading, at the moment. How is your reading going? Read anything fabulous, lately?

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