Thanks to Mama Cormier for hosting the Thursday Trios Challenge.
This week, self’s post is on: Summer Reads & Fresh Cherries
Tag: book lists
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But in the last week, he’d renewed his friendship with Absolut Vodka. And he’d found that it went very well with Cheetos. Fucking Cheetos. He’d been through the McDonald’s drive-through twice, gorging on Big Macs and fries. He couldn’t believe how good this shit tasted. Took home Domino’s one night. Ate the whole goddamn pizza himself. Woke up at midnight with the worst heartburn of his entire life. Briefly wondered — and at some level hoped — it was a heart attack and things would be over now.
— p. 30, Find You First, by Linwood Barclay -
Scorching hot day. Downtown, everyone’s in t-shirts. Yes, it is summer. Kids ran madly around the lobby of the Century 20. Self has been sleeping an average of four hours a night, thinking much of Dear Departed Mum. But today, she is determined to keep ambulatory. Hence, the movie (Raya and the Last Dragon), the books. After the movie, a stop at Go Poke. Movies are back, restaurants are back, even traffic is back.
Oak Flat: The Fight for Sacred Land in the American West was a great book. Her next, Find You First, is, according to Stephen King, “the best book” of Linwood Barclay’s career.
For self, all thrillers must be measured against the beginning of Eddie’s Boy, by Thomas Perry. Page one of Eddie’s Boy, there were already three bodies in the trunk of the main character’s Bentley and he hadn’t even broken into a sweat.
This one begins rather slow, with a loser grifter and his pathetic burner phone. Next is a young documentarian in an old folks’ home; sadly, the chapter does not slay. Then we have the millionaire/billionaire with the boring name of Miles Cookson, receiving a diagnosis of Huntington’s which is dementia mixed with Parkinson’s mixed with something else, and next he’s driving 90 in his speedster Porsche and being pulled over. A Porsche, btw, is a really really boring car. Leather bucket seats? So what else is new. She sees a lot of them around here, but it would be better to have a Tesla. Or some sort of hybrid luxury ride, like a Lexus SUV.
That’s all self has read so far. (Maybe the cop will try to kill the millionaire/billionaire? Let’s hope!)
Stay cool, dear blog readers. Stay cool.
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Finished reading Oak Flat: The Fight for Sacred Land in the American West, by Lauren Redniss, early this morning. Wow. Blown away by the polyphonic voices. And by the simple yet so-moving illustrations (by the author herself).
It joins two other books as self’s five-star reads of the 2021 reading year:
- Ice Walker: A Polar Bear’s Journey Through the Frozen Arctic, by James Raffan (nonfiction)
- The Relentless Moon, by Mary Robinette Kowal (science fiction)
Mary Robinette Kowal is one of the authors participating in this year’s SiliCon, which will be happening this August at the San Jose Convention Center. Self rushed out and got her tickets. She can’t waaaaait for August.
Have a great summer, dear blog readers.
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From wsj’s Best Books of 2020/Science Fiction:
- The Relentless Moon, by Mary Robinette Kowal – So far, one of the best novels she’s read in 2021
- Ballistic Kiss, by Richard Kadrey – wildly inventive, self wasn’t so taken with the he/she/they gender politics of a major character
In a category by itself:
- Dark, Salt, Clear, by Lamorna Ash — A first book by a 22-year-old, E.S.A.D.
Kick-Ass Discovery of the Year:
- Eddie’s Boy, by Thomas Perry, the sequel to a 1982 novel, The Butcher’s Boy – That’s chutzpah, coming up with a sequel 40 years later. Kudos! Self added The Butcher’s Boy to her reading list.
from wsj’s Best Books of 2020/Mysteries:
- All the Devils Are Here, by Louise Penny — Self adored Jean-Guy Beauvoir and of course Paris.
- One Fatal Flaw, by Anne Perry — All hail the May-December almost-romance between 25-year-old Daniel Pitt and 40-year-old Miriam Crofft, daughter of his employer.
from The Economist’s Books of the Year 2020/Memoir
- A Promised Land, by Barack Obama — Beautifully written, can’t believe 45 was succeeded by Drumpf.
from The Economist’s Books of the Year 2020/Fiction
- SHUGGIE BAIN, by Douglas Stuart — an absolutely immersive experience, though her favorite character was not the title character but his unheralded older brother, Leek
from The Economist’s Books of the Year 2020/Business and Economics
- No Rules Rules — This one was a disappointment.
from wsj’s Books of the Year 2020/Travels in the New North
- Ice Walker, by James Raffan — another absolutely immersive experience, the ending almost broke self.
from Jonathan Strahan’s Notes from a Year Spent Indoors (Locus Magazine)
- the first two books in Joe Abercrombie’s (smashing) Age of Madness trilogy and her first Grimdark: A Little Hatred and The Trouble with Peace
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Behind the dumpster is something wrapped in a dirty tarp, with stones holding the edges down. I kick the stones away on one side and toss back the tarp. And get my first look at the Hellion Hog in — how long? Well over a year.
— Ballistic Kiss, p. 28The Hellion Hog doesn’t have a key because no one can ride it but me. I get a grip on the handlebars and kick the bike to life.
— p. 29 -
The beginning of Ice Walker: A Polar Bear’s Journey Through the Fragile Arctic is so captivating, just as The Butterfly Effect‘s opening chapters were. Hope author James Raffan is able to keep the focus on polar bears, not drift into a depiction of human activity — all self wants is nature, all the time.
What she loved so much about Eddie’s Boy, which she blazed through a few days ago, was how relentless it was. The book was about a hitman, and he stayed hitman to the very end, no apologies. She appreciates Thomas Perry’s singular focus. You would think a reader would find all the killing pretty rote by the end — but no, it stayed fresh. Again, kudos to Thomas Perry.
Chapter One of Ice Walkers (“Circling”) is gripping:
- She stops and sniffs the frigid air, with almost no vapor trail from her mouth or nose. In a frozen world where liquid freshwater for drinking is absent, she draws on metabolic water created by the burning of seal fat, her main food source. The outside air is desert dry, but the air in her lungs is humid. Somehow she is able to conserve moisture and stay sufficiently hydrated, even when running or exerting herself physically in the hunt, when a human would soon die from winter dehydration. Every one of these adaptations is a marvel that has taken untold generations to evolve. These are not physiological changes that can respond to seasonal or even annual environmental shifts.
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The following do not contain all the long-listed books, only the ones that self thinks she will actually get around to reading in 2021 (and one she has already read, which she highly recommends: The Prince of Mournful Thoughts and Other Stories, by Caroline Kim). They’re a mix of memoirs, novels, and short story collections.
- Borderland Apocrypha, by Anthony Cody (Omnidawn)
- Crooked Hallelujah, by Jo Ford (Grove Press)
- How Much of These Hills Is Gold: A Novel, by C. Pam Zhang (Riverhead Books)
- Imaginary Museums, by Nicolette Polek (Soft Skull Press)
- Inheritors, by Asako Serizawa (Doubleday)
- Sharks in the Time of Saviors: A Novel, by Kawai Strong Washburn (MCD)
- The Butterfly Lampshade, by Aimee Bender (Doubleday)
- The Magical Language of Others: A Memoir, by E. J. Koh (Tin House)
- The Prince of Mournful Thoughts and Other Stories, by Caroline Kim (University of Pittsburgh Press)
- This Is All I Got: A New Mother’s Search for Home, by Lauren Sandler (Random House)
- You Will Never Be Forgotten: Stories, by Mary South (FSG Originals)
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On the level of I NEVER KNEW:
Slave-trading ship captains, many of whom hailed from New England port towns, regularly sailed in and out of the congested piers of Manhattan. Nathaniel Gordon Sr., a native of Portland, Maine, made a long and prosperous career in buying and selling African peoples beginning in the 1820s, and by the 1830s he was running a regular business in black bodies among the West African coast, Havana, and New York City. Gordon oversaw the conversion of legitimate commercial ships into vessels outfitted for the slave trade, and he remained one step ahead of law enforcement.
The Kidnapping Club: Wall Street, Slavery, and Resistance on the Eve of the Civil War, by Jonathan Daniel Wells, pp. 85 – 86
Kanlaon 