What Fiction are you reading this week, May 31, 2020?

[hermetic]

Old church in Portugal now a bookstore.

I am reading Cemetery Dance by Douglas Preston and Lincoln Child. Special Agent Pendergast returns to New York City to investigate a murderous cult. (Republicans) Action packed mystery and suspense. It’s a real page-turner.

Listening to Michael Connelley’s Murder Book podcasts on his website. These are not fiction but actual cases which have inspired his novels.

What books are inspiring you this week? Hope you are all staying healthy.

[trixie2]

1. Since no access to the library...............

Am reading books that I buy from the $1 used sale..............

Am reading Beach House Reunion by Monroe. It's ok. Very predictable. All sunshine and rainbows. Am learning about the plight of Loggerhead turtles!

[hermetic]

2. Glad to hear

you have found a way to get a hold of some books, anyway. Perhaps your library will start offering curbside service soon. Mine started doing that a few weeks ago.

Loggerheads are cool! As a “keystone species,” other animals depend on them for survival.

[The King of Prussia]

3. Brothers In Law by Henry Cecil

A humourous novel about a newly-qualified lawyer.

Otherwise this week I read
"The nature of the beast" by Frances Fyfield
"Knots & Crosses" by Ian Rankin - I wasn't overly impressed
"The man in the net" by Patrick Quentin - good but the protagonist is very dodgy, and
The Sleeping Doll by Jeffrey Deaver - too many plot twists IMO.
"Gently by the Shore" by Alan Hunter - not ENOUGH plot twists IMO

Other than reading not much happens here. In our area we are down to less than 10 new cases a day (population over 500,000), & deaths are down too. The lockdown rules are being greatly relaxed tomorrow, so fingers crossed there's no second wave.

Very distressed by what is happening over there. Please stay safe DU readers.

[hermetic]

5. Henry Cecil's books

sound like fun reads. A bit too obscure for my library, though. I've put him on my list for used bookstore searches.

I, too, was not overly impressed with Knots & Crosses BUT it was the very first Rebus book so kind of important to read, I think.

I am also quite distressed by what is happening. Fortunately, I am far away from the violence but I do know quite a few people who are not, so I am concerned for their safety.

[murielm99]

4. I am still reading

"The Grass Crown," by Colleen McCullough. It is a fat book, a little over 800 pages. It is very good.

My library has begun curbside service. Who knows what next week will bring?

[hermetic]

6. Really, who knows?

I will be so glad when the day comes I do not have to say that EVERY. FREAKING. MORNING. I hope you are in an okay place. My kids live in Chicago and I am a bit concerned about them today...

[murielm99]

11. My kids are in North Beach,

Toronto and suburban Chicago. They are not without danger in their locations. I spent most of last night texting them.

The daughter in North Beach is worried about her academic library reopening. She is one of the union people fighting for safety for the workers. She lectures two classes as well. The unrest is not close to her. My son will continue to work from home, even though Illinois is reopening. My youngest says there is unrest, even in Toronto. A lot of her work has dried up. She is a freelance translator, and she works for a government program, too, which has closed for the time being. I just sent her some money. Her husband works from home, but he has a relatively new job.

We remain parents, no matter how old they are.

[AnnieBW]

7. Just finished "Children of Vice and Virtue"

by Tomi Adeyeme. WOW! Warning - it may be classified as "Young Adult" because it is about young adults. However, there are some pretty mature themes in there, including genocide and use of biological weapons.

[hermetic]

9. Interestingly

It seems books labeled "Young Adult" are becoming a lot more mature-themed these days. It makes me kind of sad.

[TexasProgresive]

8. Still reading " The Night Fire" Connelly

Found 3 Ruth Rendel books I miss laid. One will be next.

[hermetic]

10. Now where did I put those....

That happens a lot around here these days.

[argyl]

12. I'm reading Blood's a Rover by James Ellroy.

It's the third book of Ellroy's Underworld USA trilogy.

The first two were American Tabloid and The Cold Six Thousand.

As a crime fiction novelist Ellroy's works are quite different from peers such as Michael Connelly and James Lee Burke.

The entire Trilogy covers almost 2,000 pages.

[hermetic]

13. Gosh, Ellroy

has written a bunch of stuff, going back to 1981. I thought I had never heard of him but he wrote both The Black Dahlia and L.A. Confidential, so I guess I had.

Evidently he uses an unusual narrative style: Dialogue and narration in Ellroy novels often consists of a "heightened pastiche of jazz slang, cop patois, creative profanity and drug vernacular" with a particular use of period-appropriate slang. He often employs stripped-down staccato sentence structures, a style that reaches its apex in The Cold Six Thousand and which Ellroy describes as a "direct, shorter-rather-than-longer sentence style that's declarative and ugly and right there, punching you in the nards." This signature style is not the result of a conscious experimentation but of chance and came about when he was asked by his editor to shorten his novel L.A. Confidential by more than one hundred pages. Rather than removing any subplots, Ellroy abbreviated the novel by cutting every unnecessary word from every sentence, creating a unique style of prose. While each sentence on its own is simple, the cumulative effect is a dense, baroque style. -Wikipedia