"Mudbound is the debut novel by American author Hillary Jordan. It has been translated into French, Italian, Serbian, Norwegian, Swedish, and Turkish and has sold more than 250,000 copies worldwide. The novel took Jordan seven years to write. Wikipedia"


And the CD player has Black Violin latest release. Take The Stairs.

"Black Violin is an American hip hop duo from Florida comprising two classically trained string instrumentalists, Kevin Sylvester and Wilner Baptiste, who go by the stage names Kev Marcus and Wil B. Kev Marcus plays the violin, and Wil B. plays the viola. Wikipedia"

Sad to think that all that happened not so long ago.

Didn't realize it had been made into a movie. Will have to check it out.

Nominated for 4 Oscars. It's not out on DVD yet, though it has been on Netflix. You can hear the soundtrack album on You Tube and it's quite lovely.

A retelling of the Don Quixote story, updated for 2019.

Rushdie takes the reader on a wild ride through a country on the verge of moral and spiritual collapse. And, with the kind of storytelling magic that is the hallmark of Rushdie’s work, he presents a profoundly human quest for love and a wickedly entertaining portrait of an age in which fact is so often indiscernible from fiction.

It is the book in brief.

If you like Rushdie, and I do, his clever writing is a joy. In my view, his writing style shows a Victorian sensibility.

I like to put review parts on here to hopefully encourage others to want to read the books. I am a big Rushdie fan but it's been a while since I read anything and now I have two new ones on my list of must-reads. So thanks.

Really enjoying it. Hard to put down.

Bestselling author and Pulitzer Prize winner Elizabeth Strout continues the life of her beloved Olive Kitteridge, a character who has captured the imaginations of millions of readers. Prickly, wry, resistant to change yet ruthlessly honest and deeply empathetic, Olive Kitteridge is “a compelling life force.”

by Sharyn McCrumb. She is an Appalachian writer whose family settled in the area in 1790. If you have not read her Ballad books, a loosely connected series, you are missing something great.

In this story, a woman with no particular training has to take over as sheriff after her husband dies. This is in depression era Appalachia. She has to overcome the prejudice against a woman, and take on the job of hanging a man with whom she had family ties. In fact, a newly appointed female sheriff was required by law to personally hang a prisoner at a public execution.

This story is based on a real event. The author says it more about the woman who is determined to do her job so that she can keep it, and keep her young children from starvation.

I recommend the Ballad Series to all the fiction readers here.

Since it is the Christmas season, read "Nora Bonesteel's Christmas Past," a novella. Ms. Bonesteel is a recurring character in the series. She has The Sight. If you read this one out of order, it will only whet your appetite for the rest of the series.

All the books are inspired by real historical events. I learn a lot every time I read one. In addition to some history, I learn about the tenacity and courage of people who do not resemble me. I learn some respect for other types of people.

I do like her stories. And I really enjoy finding Christmas tales this time of year.

"In a story of spirits, memories, and angels unaware, Sharyn McCrumb revisits her most loved characters who know there is more to this world than the eye can see, especially at Christmastime."

Thanks!!

She is such an engaging writer - I just kept reading because I wanted to know what happens next.

Thought the ending was a bit of a cop out but, there were so many ways she could have gone with it.
All in all, a good read.

I agree.

1747. Sounds worth reading...

Written entirely in letters, this novel conveys the nuances and tensions only present in personal epistolary form. The virtuous but self-deceiving Clarissa and the charming villain Lovelace haunt the imagination as fully as Romeo and Juliet or Tristan and Isolde.

Reading on line you don’t see the “pages.” I’m reading it because he highly influenced Jane Austen who is one of my favorite writers.

Thanks for the post!

By Nelson DeMille and Alex DeMille

Takes place in Venezuela and offers some vivid descriptions of the heartbreaking conditions in that country.

A blistering thriller featuring a brilliant and unorthodox Army investigator. Sounds good. And sad.

X-Files on military supplied steroids. The hero is a cross between Fox Mulder and Jack Ryan. At times it's a little cheesy, but then you hit a REALLY good part and that doesn't seem to matter. If you liked Independence Day or Tremors, you would like this book.I haven't seen the movie/TV series by the same name, but from reading the synopsis of those, I don't think this story is related. This is the first book in a series that contains 14 books.

Thanks

Next for me is The Tale Teller by Anne Hillerman. Let's see if the daughter can grab be like her father Tony as she keeps alive Leaphorn, Chee and Manuelito.

I haven't been reading much, caught up in the hearings and when I can't take it any more watching TV shows from the 60s and 70s- pure escapism.

Granted, she's not Tony and I haven't read everything, but it is good to keep those likeable characters around, IMO.

of lives. Also, the first senate hearings. And many changes in transatlantic travel regulations. Most of all, how we, the industrialized nations saw ourselves, was challenged, within our deepest certainties of how this new age was impervious and we were all invulnerable, what we made, our visions, until the sinking of the Titanic, we, this new age, had not been tested.

The end was the start of so much.

I think Morgan Llywelyn began with the sinking of the Titanic as a metaphor for the weakness of the British domination of the Irish people, and ending with the execution of the leaders of the rising. The Easter Monday rising like the sinking of the Titanic - a glorious beginning that ended in disaster. So as you said, "The end was the start of so much." From the blood of these leaders executed after a secret trial with no defense allowed erupted Irish outrage that was not present prior. The last line in the book is:
November 22,1916
H.M.S. BRITANNIC, SISTER SHIP OF
TITANIC, SINKS IN THE AEGEAN

3 May: Patrick Pearse, Thomas MacDonagh and Thomas Clarke
4 May: Joseph Plunkett, William Pearse, Edward Daly and Michael O'Hanrahan
5 May: John MacBride
8 May: Éamonn Ceannt, Michael Mallin, Seán Heuston and Con Colbert
12 May: James Connolly and Seán Mac Diarmada

BTW- I am zero% Irish but kiss me anyway.

Where The Crawdads Sing by Delia Owens.

Part growing up story, part murder mystery. Wonderful writing with delicious milieu descriptors.

Highly recommend.

Winner of the Man Booker Prize. Told with ferocious energy and sly, wicked humor.

Every passage is another treatise on internal vs external clash of semantics. I've never really come across anything like it. Savoring the read, I am.

Life has been really hectic, so not enough time to read. Should have this done by Thanksgiving. And then it's catching up on comic books over Thanksgiving.

Just finished listening to the latest in the Lizbeth Salander series, created by Stieg Larsson and now carried on by David Lagercrantz. This one is The Girl Who Lived Twice. Murder on Mt. Everest. Sherpa murdered in Stockholm. Russian troll factories. Mikael Blomkvist in love. And of course, Salander. She is a fantastic character. She's the MacGyver of computer hackers and the Jack Reacher of righteous killer. By the end of this one you wonder if she's run out of targets. But the epilogue lays the groundwork for the next novel, and I can't wait.

Listening to The Second Sleep by Robert Harris. My wife's been trying to get me to listen to his Cicero trilogy, but I don't share her fondness of novels about the Roman empire. This one is not that. It's a challenge to comment on this book without spoilers. If you like novels about medieval England, this is for you. If you have a passing interest in post apocalypse dystopias, give it a try. The writing is first-rate, of course, and it addresses issues that are the focus of any number of offbeat forums today. I'm about half way through, but I suspect I'll come away thinking that maybe the issues address on offbeat forums may not be so offbeat.

Reading The Brink, the second in the Awakened series by James Murray. I commented on Awakened in a previous post. It's off-the-wall, far-fetched, etc. Just about 30 pages in. The Nazis seem to be keen on taking over the world, though my guess is that they'll fail. Eventually. But the good guys are not going to have it easy. BTW, the Nazis might be stand-ins for the Murdoch family.

The Bus on Thursday, by Australian writer Shirley Barrett. This is one weird novel, and in the end I don't think it came together. The narrator and protagonist is Eleanor, a 30-something woman who has had to deal with breast cancer and a boyfriend who broke up with her because of it. Long story, but she ends up taking a job at an 11-student school in the outback, has an affair with a good-looking but otherwise pretty disgusting vacuum cleaner salesman whose brother is one of her students. In some respects, hilarity ensures, but at every decision point - and there are many - she keeps making what I would regard as the wrong decisions about what she should do to set things right. A woman reader might have a different take, but I was disappointed. Also, the blurb was highly misleading in describing Eleanor's journey as one of recovery and self-discovery. In my view, it was neither.

Don't know if I mentioned the latest Jack Reacher novel, Blue Moon. Listened to it a week or so ago. Mostly typical Jack Reacher, though the death count was damn near astronomical. Non-spoiler: The good guys prevail. Oh, and Reacher fell in love, though I won't ruin it by telling you how it turns out.

Also can't remember whether I mentioned The Institute by Stephen King. (I could check, but I'm too lazy.) Not so much horror. Just sort of run-of-the-mill supernatural. Not his best, but with a gazillion books under his belt, I'm not sure I could really say which one is, in my view, the best or at least the best I've read. Or even my favorite. I just like reading most of Stephen King, and I don't really care much where he takes me in his books.

by Graeme Simsion. It's the third in a series and it's a hoot.

The narrator is one Don Tillson, who is clearly an Aspie, but doesn't fully realize it. In the first book, the Rosie Project, he decides it's time to find a wife (the Wife Project), and because of his Asperger's, things go amusingly wrong. The second, The Rosie Effect is about the beginning of his marriage to Rosie. This one is some ten or so years later, and it's quite obvious that Don and Rosie's son Hudson is likewise an Aspie. Don decides to deal with his son's school and social issues. It's a hoot.

My descriptions are boring and incomplete. Do read the books. Especially the first and third.

Simsion's book The Best of Adam Sharp is so completely different from the other three that you must read it as if it were written by someone else entirely. But it's very good. It's just that after the Rosie ones, your expectations will simply not match this book. But I recommend it.

I see that Simsion has one more novel, co-written with his wife, Two Steps Forward. My library has it so I think I'll go get it.