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Streaming series
The Scientist and I are watching a variety of series on different streaming services. Stranger Things is one we’ve been watching since it started. We have never watched more than two episodes at a time because we really want to savor them and also many of them are so intense that just one is enough. We’re down to the last two episodes after watching a long one last night. We’d put these off because it’s like planning to watch a film when seeing these. I know we could watch a part and then come back to it but I feel like it would take something away. I do look forward to reaching the end on this, mostly because it has taken a while to complete the series.
Another series that we need to finish is Ted Lasso. I had free months on an Apple subscription and started watching this towards the end of it. Then I got an offer for more free months. We’ve finished seasons one and two and just need to finish the last season. This series started off being really humorous and somewhat serious at the same time. Now the humor is still there but I feel like the serious aspects are more dominant.We also have been watching The Sandman and it’s a similar situation to Stranger Things because each episode requires time to digest it. I have read some of the graphic novels but it’s been a long enough time that I can approach the series as somewhat new material. There’s also Good Omens, which is also based on Neil Gaiman’s work (with Terry Pratchett). It’s a really great book and the first season was really well done. We started watching the new season last week and it’s looking good so far.
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The Bullet that Missed
This is the title of an audiobook I just finished listening to. It’s the third in a series of detective novels about four seniors from a retirement community investigating suspicious deaths. I read the first two novels and listened to them on audiobook with one narrator. The third book was released a few months ago and it was the audiobook version that showed up first in the library catalogue. As I had enjoyed the first two, I figured this would work for me. I really did like the book although not quite as much as the earlier books. There were too many loose ends at the end of the book which made it feel not quite finished. I’m sure those ends will be picked up in the next book.
But the main thing that was difficult was the change of narrator That’s not a bad thing exactly but the style of this narrator was different and made it harder to listen. The really big problem was she narrated so much of the book in a whisper. I mostly listened in the car and was constantly increasing the volume so I could hear. I don’t think the whole book should require such a high volume on it. Anyway, I did adjust to the new narrator after several chapters but the whisper carried on a bit more than it should have. If this narrator continues, I hope this is worked out a bit better in the next book.
The book itself was highly entertaining and contains a cast of characters with all sorts of interesting quirks and personalities. Like earlier volumes, it’s also full of both humor and pathos as some tricky subjects are touched upon.
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As expected
I wrote recently about reading The Atlas Six and then having the follow-up book, The Atlas Paradox, available from the library right all ready to start when I was ready. I did like a lot about the first book but I didn’t love it. Mostly I enjoyed the character-driven aspects. It seemed to fall down when it got to some of the science which mostly fell into the area of physic. I never studied physics but even I could tell that some of the plot was a bit of a stretch. Not even the magic part of the book could compensate for this problem. Still, I was able to overlook it to some degree because I enjoyed other parts of the book. I was concerned at the end when new characters and plot devices were revealed. It felt like something that could get really messy unless handled well. I kind of underestimated how badly it ended up being.
Ultimately there wasn’t really a proper plot in the second book. Lots of potential ones and lots of ideas being thrown around. But not a plot. There was limited action in the second book, mostly just conversations that came nowhere near driving a story. It felt like the writer just kept adding more and more to the story, trying to cover too much territory and doing none of it well. The science got even worse and something happens to make a cliffhanger that seems terribly unlikely. Not to mention the character involved acts in ways that seem unlikely for this character. There’s just not enough to convince me the character has changed in ways that would create this “development”. Other characters also had changes that seemed to come out of nowhere. It’s as though the drive of the characters ran out of steam and they just kind of fizzled out.
I finished the book but it was something of a struggle to get there. There is another book but I can’t see how this story could even be saved at this point. Still, I do have some curiosity about where it’s all going. Not that I will be losing sleep until the next book is released. LOL
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Recent reading
I’ve been going through a lot of books lately, and most haven’t been advanced reader books either. Not to say I haven’t had enough of those, but I haven’t requested too many books lately. Most of my reading has been library ebooks and audiobooks along with rereads of others.
A Dreadful Splendour by B.R. Myers is a gothic mystery that features a clever young woman who has gotten by doing seances for rich people since her mother died. She is arrested after one reading but strangely is released into the custody of a lawyer who needs her help. He takes her away to a country manor where the plan is for her to ease the suffering of a young man whose fiance committed suicide by doing one of her performances. She arrives to find the man is not suffering heartbreak and doesn’t believe in her work. Instead, he wants her help to discover the person who caused his fiance to die. It’s a great story with a few twists and turns and even a bit of romance along the way. It was very reminiscent of the gothic romances I read when I was a teenager but in a new and improved version. I discovered the writer is from Halifax, Nova Scotia which is quite cool since we lived across the harbor in Dartmouth the year we lived in Canada.
I’d been seeing The Thursday Murder Club by Richard Osman on the bestseller lists for quite a while and ran across a copy in our library that was available on audiobook. Four older people living in a retirement village have a club called the Thursday Murder Club. They meet on Thursdays and review old cases to see if they can solve them. Of course, a real murder comes along to give them something to really look into. There are some great personalities involved and lots of humor along with a fair bit of pathos too. The narrator was wonderful and I could really see it all happening through her work. I enjoyed this so much that I followed up with the next book, The Man Who Died Twice and have the third book on reserve.
Another book I’d seen in various media was The Atlas Six by Olivie Blake. I had a chance to read its follow-up from Netgalley but didn’t want to be rushed to read both books. This showed up in ebook form and I grabbed it. Then the next book, The Atlas Paradox was released and available on the same platform as the first and I checked that out too. I was shocked it was available so soon. Maybe I happened upon it just after it was released. Anyway, I finished the first book last night and I did enjoy it. It’s about six of the best magic users in the world being recruited into a secret society. And one of them has to be eliminated (aka killed) before initiation a year later. A significant part of the book goes on about physics as two of the group are physicists. I’m not too sure how well the science talk stacks up but it kind of worked in my head since my knowledge is so limited. Each of the six has a different specialty and we get the point of view of all of them through the book, allowing us to see their strengths and vulnerabilities. I immediately started the next book and suspect I will finish it long before my four weeks are up. I am curious to see if the story can continue to hold on to the tension of the first. I find a lot of books don’t sustain themselves through to the next book. I remember reading a fantasy trilogy a year or two ago that I really liked through books one and two, but hated the third and final book. The first book introduces quite a number of elements and I do wonder if it will all make sense as presumably the second adds even more.
The last book of note is a regency romance book called Convergence of Desire by Felicity Niven. This is a less typical romance, featuring a neurodivergent woman who is too busy trying to solve Fermat’s theorem to bother with the marriage mart and its associated details. So she makes a deal with an earl to marry him for convenience only. What follows is a rather slow-burn romance that reflects what I think could happen in such a romance. And it allows for her to keep to her own feelings instead of being forced into the mold of others. Mostly it shows that even neurodivergent people can love and be loved. It may not be in the same way as others but that doesn’t make it less of a thing. Niven wrote two other books in the series which I enjoyed well enough, but they don’t stand out like this one.
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Books I’ve been reading
Like many other habits, my reading slowed down quite a bit while I was in the US. I’ve been making goals on Goodreads each year to finish 100 books and I’ve been behind on that for most of the year. But I am just about caught up now.
I recently read My Oxford Year by Julia Whelan and I immensely enjoyed it. At first, it seemed to be a contemporary romantic comedy but about a third of the way through I discovered it was not quite the light read I expected. Also, it wasn’t an original story but one based on a script for a movie, I think. This one is about a young woman who gets a Rhodes Scholarship and goes to Oxford for a year while also working on an election campaign back home in the US.
I read The Venice Train by Georges Simenon very recently for Netgalley. I know of Simenon for his series of Maigret detective stories although I haven’t read any of his work before. This one turned out to be a psychological thriller of sorts. It has such good pacing that it has you on the edge of your seat much of the time. It’s about a man who leaves his family’s holiday in Venice to return to Paris by train. On the way back a stranger requests a favor that upends his life in the most negative of ways.
A non-fiction book that was quite good is Secrets of Women’s Healthy Ageing: Living Better, Living Longer by Cassandra Szoeke. The author is part of a long-term research study on women’s health here in Australia that has been running for thirty years. There are a number of important takeaways but for me, the most important one was to keep moving. It seems keeping active will affect most areas of life positively, from blood sugar to bone health to mental health. There’s a lot of interesting information with regard to research into women’s health too.
Also non-fiction is the memoir by Hannah Gadsby. I first read this as an ebook and then it was available as an audiobook so I checked that out and listened and it was quite good. There’s some pretty tough material in the book and Hannah narrates in a similar way to her comedy and it worked really well for me. I had listened to another memoir from another Australian comedian and it just didn’t sound quite right. I think I would have enjoyed reading more than listening. This one is done beautifully.
Lastly, I am currently rereading Rebecca by Daphne du Maurier. My parents had this book on their shelves and I read it probably during my teenage years. It really left a big impression at the time which has remained with me since. I decided enough years have passed that it’s definitely worth a revisit and I started reading it on ebook. I’m only a couple of chapters in, but I will note the beautiful language used to start the book. I don’t suppose I appreciated this so much at the time I first read it but it is really well written.
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Finished
I finished Where the Crawdads Sing today and I must admit it was a bit of a disappointment for me. While I enjoyed listening to much of the story, I got hung up on some details and couldn’t get past it. Mostly the constant reference to Asheville as the place people went to reach the big town. Asheville is a good seven to eight hours away and there are so many cities that would be better suited instead. I just kept thinking why they had to go so far away…and how could they afford it? I also found the ending just didn’t work for me on a couple of fronts. I kind of see where the writer was coming from but it just didn’t fit the story (for me) even though I kind of saw it coming.
I was reading a review of the book from someone who lives in the coastal area of NC and the Asheville thing was also mentioned. I honestly thought more people would speak up about that but perhaps not many know much about NC geography. I once drove from Winston-Salem to Elizabeth City (which is still probably an hour from the coast) and it took me five to six hours going and longer coming back (due to terrible fog) and it’s a long drive.
That review also mentioned the fact they don’t call them fireflies there but lightning bugs. I didn’t notice that when reading but that is the term used in the area. It’s details like this that seem to precipitate sayings about writing what you know. It just doesn’t seem the writer knows the territory very well. That said, I read she now lives in Asheville so perhaps she does have a clue now.
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More on books
My reading of Gallant was super fast and easy. I really liked the book but I wasn’t satisfied with the ending. Just left a bit too much unresolved and unanswered for me. It makes me wonder if there will be another story exploring this world. So I now need to finish Elena the Brave and review it by Friday. At the very least I will do a review and edit it to reflect completion later. As I was reading I noted mention of Kiev (Kyiv) being nearby in the story and so the folklore is closely connected, geographically, with current events.
I didn’t mention it before, but I am also reading a biography of Led Zepellin. I requested this almost a year ago on Netgalley and the publisher has still got it listed as pending, even though it was released back in November. The copy I am reading is an ebook through the library. It’s a rather hefty volume and I had renewed it once and reserved it again once. I will need to renew it again as I am not even halfway through it. One thing I don’t like about this book is the way it chronicled the development of Jimmy Page from his early days but the other three members are only mentioned as they join in and through a few references to earlier experiences later in the text. In any case, some of it has been quite enlightening, particularly in regards to the creative process of making albums. As for the other aspects of their lives, it’s pretty unsavoury. Not that this is any revelation as I remember hearing the stories of the band when I was growing up, albeit in rather less ugly detail.
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Books
I have a few books I am currently previewing but requested a few more recently. One was the upcoming release, Gallant, from V.E. Schwab who wrote The Invisible Life of Addie LaRue. I’ve read and liked some of her other work too. Anyway, I have tried to get a review copy from Netgalley and Edelweiss but had no luck. Well I happened on to the UK version of Netgalley and it was available for request and my wish was granted. :) I started reading last night and it’s a pretty fast read and it seems to be a much shorter book than the last one. I believe I will have it completed and reviewed by the 1st when it’s released.
I’m also reading a follow up to a book I read last year called Elena the Brave. It’s a sort of middle-grade adventure/fairy tale sort of thing and that’s due to be finished shortly too. I’m enjoying it but it seems to be a longer read than the previous volume so is taking more time.
I’m currently listening to Where the Crawdads Sing and I am enjoying that a lot. I’ve seen it on bestseller lists but hadn’t paid much attention to it. Then I noticed it was available from the library and snatched it up. There’s a murder mystery involved and it involves an isolated girl who has lived in the marshes of North Carolina all her life. I should say it’s assumed to be a murder but the story is still unfolding.
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Disappointing
I caught up on all my reviews at Netgalley recently and put in a request for a murder mystery that sounded interesting. Unfortunately, it was really terrible and my most constructive comment was that it really could benefit from more revision before publishing. So many of the details would change from one scene to the next and it seemed that having someone just read through it should have picked this up. The conversations are equally bad with a person saying one thing in a scene and then a very different thing elsewhere. As I understand it, it’s rather expensive to get reviews through Netgalley and the cheapest method is through a co-op on the site. It doesn’t seem like any editing has been done on it so I wonder if they even have editors through this publisher.
I might have thought this was a debut novel but it seems the writer has already done two other books. The previous one was also on Netgalley and most of the reviews were similar to what mine is for this one. It doesn’t seem like the writer has taken on any of the criticism. Anyway, I won’t publish reviews anywhere aside from Netgalley as it doesn’t seem like there will be any benefit to the writer.
On a related note, my book blog is called One More Page. It’s supposed to be on the sidebar but it seems the sidebar is missing in some cases. I’m still looking into it.
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Finally
It took a long time but I finally finished reading Chronicles from the Land of the Happiest People on Earth by Wole Soyinka. It’s an interesting book because it’s all over the place for the better part of the first half, and then there’s a proper plot in the latter part of the book. I can see a bit of what the aim was for the writer but it really was way too long. I found the second half far better than the first half and found myself wanting to read more towards the end. Before that, the flow just wasn’t quite there. Overall I did like it but I don’t consider it a major success. I am glad I kept on with it, though, and now I feel a bit freer to request more books for review. I’m currently listening to an audiobook of A Narrow Door by Joanne Harris. It’s actually the third in a series and I’m fairly sure I read the first book many years ago. So far it’s very intriguing and I look forward to the twists and turns to reach the conclusion.
As a side note, I’ve added a link to the blog I started for book reviews on the sidebar. It’s been in a bit of a lull recently but I’m trying to get back into it again.