Monday Malarkey

Recent arrivals (top to bottom):

• Map of the Heart by Susan Wiggs - from HarperCollins for review
• The Girl Who Never Read Noam Chomsky by Jana Casale - from Penguin Random House for review
• Store of the Worlds by Robert Sheckley - purchased
• Beast Rider by Tony Johnston and Maria Elena Fontanot de Rhoads - from Abrams Books for review
• The Manic Pixie Dream Boy Improvement Project by Lenore Applehans - purchased
• Things You Save in a Fire by Katherine Center - from St. Martin's Press for review
• The Last Year of the War by Susan Meissner - from Berkley Books for review

That's two weeks' worth because I missed posting a Monday Malarkey, last week. I don't even remember why. Huh. I might have been tired from our trip to New Jersey the week before. Anyway, it looks like a very fun pile. Of the two purchases, Lenore's book was pre-ordered some time ago and Store of the Worlds is one that my eldest son recommended. At the time, I was totally in the mood for SciFi, so when I came home from New Jersey I looked it up and found a used copy. And, then I got over my craving for out-of-this-world reading. It will return. I never know what I'll desire to read, from one day to the next.


Books finished since last Malarkey:

• Learning to See by Elise Hooper
• Lady Derring Takes a Lover by Julie Anne Long
• Beast Rider by T. Johnston and M. E. Fontenot de Rhoads
• Operation Frog Effect by Sarah Scheerger

Our trip to New Jersey (bonus: it snowed every day!) was to visit family and meet our new grandchild, who is the sweetest, most unflappable baby I've ever met. She smiles a dozen times more than she cries. I'm envious that I never had such a sweet-tempered baby. Visiting with family definitely cut into the reading time but last week was closer to normal in spite of a migraine that lasted all week. This week, work removing our deck to replace it with a more permanent porch structure begins. It's pouring rain but we have three vehicles parked in front of our house and it looks like the workers are sitting in their trucks, emerging between downpours to put out flags marking the gas and power lines. It'll be interesting to see if noisy construction messes with my reading when the removal and actual construction get going.


Currently reading:

• A Dangerous Collaboration by Deanna Raybourn

I did not finish The Speech by Gary Younge and I found it heavy reading so I'm considering DNF'ing it and just saving it for next year's Black History Month. So, BHM reading was a #fail in 2019. I won't stop myself from reading it sooner if I feel like it; there's no reason to wait a year. I just don't feel like finishing it at the moment. OK, yep, I just talked myself into abandoning the book, for now. The blog is still good for something, then, haha.

A Dangerous Collaboration is the 4th in the Veronica Speedwell mystery series and I haven't read the first three but I'm tempted. So far, little has really happened but I love the setting and feel immersed in it, appreciate the characterization, and am finding the dialogue entertaining. It remains to be seen whether or not I'll enjoy the denouement enough to seek out the first three books, of course, but at this point I'm definitely interested.


Posts since last Malarkey:

• Late in the Day by Tessa Hadley (book review)
• Franny and Zooey by J. D. Salinger (book review)
• The Girls at 17 Swann Street by Yara Zgheib (book review)
• Fiona Friday - Just thinking (cat photo) 
• The Feed by Nick Clark Windo (book review) 
• Lady Derring Takes a Lover by Julie Anne Long (book review) 
• The Book of Strange New Things by Michel Faber (book review) 
• Operation Frog Effect by Sarah Scheerger (book review) 
• Fiona Friday on the Wrong Day (cat photo) 

I was just flipping through my calendar (where I record finished books), not long ago, and doing so reminded me just how eclectic my reading is. While reading a wide variety began as a deliberate act because I'd burned out on two separate genres, it seems to have become habitual. I have trouble even imagining reading anything almost exclusively, now, but I can still remember walking along the mystery aisle in Books-a-Million, looking for my next paperback mystery read when I was addicted to series books. Now, I almost never read a series. If you see a review in which I say I can't wait to read the next book (or go back to the beginning to read those I've missed), you know it's special because I'm so seldom tempted to read on. Romance series tend to be catching my attention, lately, and I usually read romance rarely. Funny how our tastes are altered over time and even circle back.


In other news:

If you lived through the 70s, you've got to appreciate Eat, Pray, Love, a Hallmark movie that includes a secondary romance starring Lee Majors and Lindsay Wagner, of The Six Million Dollar Man and The Bionic Woman. I found the rest of the story far too predictable and trite but, whatever . . . that's the whole point of Hallmark movies, knowing love will happen. It just wasn't a favorite. I gave it a 7/10. My husband humorously gave it a 12/10. "How can you not love it?" he asked me. "Lindsay Wagner and Lee Majors finally got together!" True. That part was immensely satisfying.

That was the only movie we watched. And, the only TV I watched was an episode of NCIS on Tuesday and Chicago Med  followed by Chicago Fire on Wednesday, mostly because I was too tired to turn the TV off and get up after the news, but I do enjoy Chicago Fire. Oddly, the same doctor was in trouble with the psychiatrist for similar reasons to the last time I watched Chicago Med. She has no filter, poor dear.

Yesterday, we trudged downtown to see the traveling cast of Les Miserables! So exciting. It was very, very different from the London version, which has a rotating stage and different sets, so we enjoyed talking about the differences over Greek-American fare, after it was over. Someday, I have got to get to that book.


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