🚚🎥🤳👩‍🍼Suspenseful Mystery, 💔Ficiton, and🐌🛸 More Sci-FI!🤖🦾👽

 

Twisty, slightly unbelievable, 

    Holly Jackson is brilliant at plotting. She creates snaky, torturous storylines that keep me guessing. In The Reappearance of Rachel Price, the high school senior, Bel, agrees to contribute to a documentary about her missing mother, who has been gone for sixteen years. Her dad was put on trial for her murder, but was acquitted; however, her small town never trusted him. All Bel had was her dad, then her mother returned. Jackson twists and twists the story. It was like watching a corkscrew disappear into a cork, tensely waiting for it all to pop open. 

Here is a review of Holly Jackson's A Good Girl's Guide to Murder: https://barbpruittwrites.blogspot.com/2024/11/murder-trouble-drug-trouble-and-more.html

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    Good Material by Dolly Alderton begins tediously and remains so for most of the book. A thirty-five-year-old comic, Andy, suffers a break-up with his long-term girlfriend, Jen. It devastates him, partly because he didn't see it coming. Most of the book is written from his first-person perspective, detailing his life after Jen, as he tries to piece together what happened and how to move forward without her. There is much humor in his actions, ruminations, and how his friends seek to help him. I thought about not finishing it, but several reviews said the best part of the book was the very end, so I stuck with it. I didn't find that it redeemed the previous slow pace. Overall, not a book I would recommend.

💔😭📦

    The Expert System's Champion by Adrian Tchaikovsky continues a previous novella, The Expert System's Brother. Tchaikovsky takes science fiction, an already imaginative genre, and reaches into both realistic and unforeseen places. He considers not only the flying car, but also the traffic jam. How do you survive on a plant that is poisonous to your biology? How would that impact future generations? Tchaikovsky asks and answers creative, thoughtful questions. 

Here is a link to the growing list of Adrian Tchaikovsky books I've reviewed: https://barbpruittwrites.blogspot.com/search?q=Adrian

🐌🐝🌳

    I am rereading Martha Wells' series,  The Robot Diaries, starting with All Systems Red. I have been watching Apple TV's adaptation, and it's not bad, but it doesn't square exactly with the book. I understand that books and TV shows are different forms of storytelling, with TV and films being visual. Therefore, a book adaptation will always look different from the story I've built in my head. I sometimes feel like I'm being gaslit when new plot points surface, and I think: I don't remember that. Truthfully, half the time I don't remember! 

Previous reviews of The Murderbot Diaries:

https://barbpruittwrites.blogspot.com/search?q=All+Systems+Red

https://barbpruittwrites.blogspot.com/search?q=murderbot

🤖🦾👽🛸

I Am Disturbed: War, Violence, and Climate Change.

    Some people have multiple books going at once, and I am one of them. The result is I finished five books this week. I didn't start them all this week. 

    At the recommendation of a fellow writer, I have read Lisa Cron's book Story Genius: How to Use Brain Science to Go Beyond Outlining and Write a Riveting Novel (Before You Waste Three Years Writing 327 Pages That Go Nowhere) for about six months. It was an instructive book about writing, and I think my fiction will be stronger and better for reading it. She is engaging, encouraging, and she has a master plan for writing a compelling novel. We'll see if it works.😉

 Mannequins Dressed for the Window: Haiku Secrets

by Gary Hotham

    My husband has a friend that is a published Haiku writer. Here is a link https://haikupedia.org/article-haikupedia/gary-hotham/ about him, his books, and accomplishments. He sent DH his latest publication. While sorting the mail, I opened it intending to read one or two and, instead, read the entire book while standing in the dining room. Hotham's work is lovely. I've had the privilege of hearing him read his work, and I'm a fan. Here is my favorite from Mannequins Dressed for the Window: Haiku Secrets. (I hope it is formatted correctly.)

penetrating an old story

new book odors

    Martha Wells's book, All Systems Red, is the first in The Murder Bot Diaries. It is an entertaining quick read (144 pages or 3 hours long). This is excellent sci-fiction and also a who-done-it. There are many in the series, and I already have the second one on hold. 

    City of Thieves by David Benioff and Cloud Cuckoo Land by Anthony Doer are both weighty and emotional books telling compelling, disturbing stories. 

    Benioff's novel reads like a memoir. It reportedly tells of his Russian grandfather's time in the siege of Leningrad during World War II. I found an article (https://nymag.com/arts/books/features/47040/) where Benioff explains it's all fiction, even the relationship with the grandfather. He goes a long way to creating this illusion by giving the main character the same surname as his own. It effectively makes the events of the novel--cannibalism, sexual violence, animal cruelty, and war violence--have a significant impact. It landed hard for me, partly because I read it the week Russia invaded Ukraine. I read City of Thieves to evaluate it for my historical fiction book club. It's not a good fit, but it is a powerful well-written novel that is too difficult for me personally to discuss. 

    Anthony Doerr wrote the Pulitzer Prize-winning book All the Light We Cannot See. It is among the best books I've read, so I was excited for Cloud Cuckoo Land. Doerr is a master at weaving together the storylines. This book is about five different people in three different eras. Two are involved in the siege of Constantinople, two are present day, and one is on a spaceship in the not too distant future. They are all connected by Diogenes's ancient book called Cloud Cuckoo Land. I like novels with non-linear plots. I think it's tough to make it work and do it well, but Doerr does for me, but it can be a challenge keeping all the plots straight. I looked at some reviews on Goodreads. It mainly was given five stars or one star. It is long--over 600 pages--and painful. The depictions of violence and the effects of climate change are distressing, but in a good way.

    There are some things worth reading, even though they are disturbing. I think City of Thieves, Cloud Cuckoo Land, and last week's book The Invention of Wings are troubling books. They put me inside suffering characters and let me see and feel awful things. I hope that reading them will compel me to care about others and, from that caring, to act. Unlike the people in Ukraine, I get to take a break and read something less emotionally taxing.

New Series and End of Year Round Up

    I started reading the Longmire series by Craig Johnson. The Cold Dish and Death Without Company are the first two. I'm really enjoying them. Craig Johnson writes a tight mystery- always enjoyable- but I'm most captivated by the dry humor and the supporting cast. The protagonist is mildly depressed, and it would be a much darker book if it weren't for the strong women surrounding him and his faithful best friend. If he can keep this up throughout the series, it will be a fun year for me reading through his catalog. Book 19 is due to come out in 2023. In a future post, I'll compare the book series with the Netflix version. 

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    I have done the GoodReads reading challenge for several years. I have settled on aiming for 100 books and usually pass it, but I'm reluctant to up the number. 100 is a satisfying number, and 125 or 150 just isn't. 

I see some trends in the latest books I read. One is the multiverse and, perhaps related, time travel within your life. Another is same-sex relationships. If it's not the centerpiece relationship, there is one somewhere in the book.

I read several terrific books this year, and a few I wish I hadn't.

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Most Helpful: Big Magic: Creative Living Beyond Fear by Elizabeth Gilbert

Favorite Mystery: The Thursday Murder Club by Richard Osman

Most brutal to Read, but Worth It: The Rise and Triumph of the Modern Self: Cultural Amnesia, Expressive Individualism, and the Road to the Sexual Revolution by Carl Trueman

Favorite Sci-Fi: The Space Between Worlds by Micaiah Johnson

Most Disappointing:  The Glass Hotel by Emily St. John Mandel

Most Comforting: The Penderwick Series by Jeanne Birdsall

Favorite Fantasy: Spinning Silver by Naomi Novik

Most Interesting Relationship: Tomorrow and Tomorrow and Tomorrow by Gabrielle Zevin

Favorite Memoir: Taste: My Life Through Food by Stanley Tucci

Most Surprising: Ring Shout by P. Djèlí Clark

Made Me Think: Hell of a Book Jason Mott and The Sentence by Louis Eldrich

Most Disturbing: The Secret Lives of Baba Segi's Wives by Lola Shoneyin

My Favorite Book of 2022 is:

Spinning Silver by Naomi Novik

2022 READING 
CHALLENGE

Participants	6,758,337
Books Pledged	334,703,276
Avg. Books Pledged	49
Time Left	3 days, 17 hours

You have read 134 of 100 books in 2022.

YOUR 2022 BOOKS

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