Lynda's Late to the Party

This group was just recommended to me (Hi, Whisper1!), so here I am -- late to the party. Will probably just lurk until the new year, rather than dumping 10 1/2 months' worth of reading in one post.

I generally read ~150 - 160 books a year, usually without much of a plan. I'm an OOH! SHINY! reader who is easily distracted, and average out at about 1/3 nonfiction to 2/3 fiction.

Looking forward to some good discussions and more OOH! SHINY! suggestions. :-)

Welcome, Lynda! I'm also Lynda with a Y and Linda (Whisper), along with Stasia who you'll probably meet shortly, were one of the first to welcome me to LT 14 years ago. I think you'll like it here.

Hi Lynda. I am so very glad you joined our group. I think you will like it here. We are a group of readers who share books, discuss them, recommend them, review them and encourage others in their reading choices. Always nice, kind and sincere, this group means so very much to me. And now that you are a member, all the better. Whilie the title is the 75 challenge group, there is no pressure to read 75 books.

If you have any questions, someone is always willing and ready to help.

What are you reading now?

BIG WELCOME TO YOU

Welcome to the group, Lynda

Hi Lynda, welcome to the group!

Welcome! Never too late to join!

Welcome to our group, Lynda!

#114 - I just finished re-reading Hawaii, which as usual immediately sucked me in. The final section, which is set in the mid-1950s, before Hawaiian statehood, dragged a bit, but the rest of it is just compelling.

#115 - Followed that up with an LTER that had some potential, but so desperately needed technical editing that I ended up giving it just two stars. Cleopatra's Eternal Journal would have been a fun fantasy, had the author expanded the first section, about the Egyptian queen's adventures after her earthly demise, but the second of the three short stories in the book felt mean-spirited, and the third incomplete. Add lots of format scrambling -- apparently nobody even looked at it after it was digitized -- and the whole experience was pretty discouraging.

Which brings forth a question. I usually do a couple of LTERs a month, and they are so often sloppily presented. I know errors creep in, for hardcopy as well as ebooks, but some of these things look like they were never even proofread, let alone given a tech editing check.

Why?

There's a major level of effort to getting a book written (been there), cleaned up and submitted for publication (been there), and even if a newbie author decides to go the electronic self-publishing route (never been there), why in the world would you drop the ball at that point and allow something to be sent out into the world looking like it was thrown together at 3 a.m. by a paste-up crew who were drunk on their collective asses?

#116 - Johnny Lycan & the Vegas Berserker (an LTER). Full review over on my thread in Club Reads.

Thank you as always for books, thank you for this group and thanks for you. Have a lovely day, Lynda.

>10 PaulCranswick: You're up early (4:57 a.m.)! Either you're putting a honkin' big turkey in the oven, or you're in a different time zone!

Pacific here (eastern Oregon); 37 degrees and cloudy. Happy Thanksgiving to you, too!

>11 LyndaInOregon: I'm in Malaysia, Lynda!

>12 PaulCranswick: That's definitely a different time zone! Hope you had a lovely holiday.

That definitely is a different time zone! Hope you had a wonderful day.

#117 - Knit in Comfort, Isabel Sharpe - Generally predictable tale of women's friendships, with one interesting twist near the end. Knitters will enjoy the background dealing with the art of Shetland Lace knitting.

Hubby gave me the newest Stephanie Plum book today for our anniversary, so I know what I'll be doing this afternoon!

#118 - Going Rogue -- I warned you! :-)

Congratulations on reading 118 books thus far this year!
>8 LyndaInOregon: A long time ago, I was on a mission to read every by James A. Michener
I gave up when it seemed that he had a steady/normal form of pulling a book together, and each book was a heavy clunker.

Thanks for your excellent review of Hawaii. I believe I read this, but don't remember a lot about it.

>17 Whisper1: Michener did indeed use a formula for his regional sagas -- usually starting out in a geographical area before human habitation, then working his way through the different groups of people who lived there and how they interacted with groups who came in later.

I've read Centennial, Texas, Chesapeake, Caravans, and The Source, in addition to Hawaii, which is by far my favorite. Centennial is probably second. I don't have any desire to re-read any of the others.

#119 - The Mother-in-Law, which was a whodunnit about who might have killed the family's extremely unpleasant matriarch, and why. It's a quick read, delving into family secrets and relationships. Hepworth does a good job at drawing the mother-in-law as an extremely unlikeable character; she doesn't do as well in attempting to explain and excuse her behavior.

>18 LyndaInOregon: I have only read Centennial, Lynda but I do recall enjoying it.

November Reads - Ten titles this month, with Hawaii being the standout and the LTER The Blessed being a runner-up.

Wayne Turmel's second entry in the Werewolf PI Series, Johnny Lycan & the Vegas Berserker earned a B+ from me, as did The All-Girls Filling Station's Last Reunion.

Going Rogue, Demon Copperhead, and The Mother-in-Law got strong B ratings, while Cs went to Knit in Comfort and to the LTER 'Litle Man, Big Mouth'.

Clunker of the month was the LTER 'Cleopatra's Eternal Journal', which was saved from an F only by the clever idea behind the first of the three short stories in the collection.

Hope everyone had a November list to be "thankful" for, and that you won the wishbone pull for a good December list.

#120 - Women Write: A Mosaic of Women's Voices in Fiction, Poetry, Memoir, and Essay
An eminently readable mix of classic feminist writing with some lesser-known but beautifully crafted pieces.

#121 - The Sentence. I'm still mulling over Erdrich's latest and trying to come up with something cogent to say about it. Maybe later. There's a lot going on between the covers, and I'm not sure I've got it all reconciled yet.

Going to give up on The Killing Moon. I can appreciate Jemisin's skill at world-building, but the very complexity of the society she is setting up in this series opener is dragging down the action and leaving the reader with too many unresolved questions and undefined terms. Yes, that's part of the fantasy genre bargain -- one has to take on faith that the terms eventually will make sense, from context if from nothing else, and that everything one really needs to know to comprehend the story will be revealed in due time. And I much appreciate the fact that her world isn't pseudo-Celtic or Medieval England With Dragons, and that the plot is not The Hero's Journey. This immediately places it above at least 80% of the other high fantasy out there. But after dragging myself through three days of honestly attempting to get into this, and covering only 140 pages, I'm going to admit defeat.

So I guess my next read will be a quickie -- John D. MacDonald's The Green Ripper is on the top of the TBR stack, with the oh-so-serious The Family Roe next in line behind that. I think I need to do the easy one first.

Need to make a slight adjustment in my book tally. Either I can't count (entirely possible), or I have missed getting a couple of reads into my database but have counted them elsewhere. Adjusted count as of today is actually 119 with the addition of The Green Ripper, finished last night.

That count includes DNF books, but not DNR, which sometimes get into the journal because I need to track them for swapping.

#120: The Family Roe: An American Story

See, this is why I never compile my "Best of" lists until the absolute end of the calendar year. Prager's study of the abortion battle in the U.S. focuses on the people involved, particularly the woman known as "Jane Roe" in the Roe v. Wade decision. It can be an emotionally exhausting read, but it's worth the investment. My rather lengthy review is up
here: Familyl Roe

>24 LyndaInOregon: Most countries don't seem to have near the public policy problems that you have in the States with regard to Abortion, Lynda. It is a shame that with individual states getting to decide on the issue that Americans are going to be treated in such different ways depending upon residence. It is further a shame in my own humble view that on a Federal level the two sides - more and more polarized - were not able to agree upon a sensible compromise between the extremes of criminalisation and end of term abortion.

That looks like a fascinating read, Lynda, and I will go and look for it.

>25 PaulCranswick: Prager briefly touches on abortion laws outside the U.S. and on how the different social/political structures and religious/secular influences impact the issue. It's definitely worth the investment of time. It wouldn't surprise me if the recent Dobbs decision didn't result in increased interest in this book.

>26 LyndaInOregon: I think it almost certainly will, Lynda. It is a subject so many are passionate about and I will certainly want to read it myself.

#121 - A Lost Lady, by Willa Cather - Beautifully crafted short novel which takes the notion of "coming of age" far beyond the personal, yet grounds it in skillfully nuanced portraits of the characters.

#122 - Deja Dead, by Kathy Reichs - Similar to Patricia Cornwall's stuff. Temperance Brennan is a forensic pathologist working in Quebec. The writing is good and the character likeable, but this first book in the series is marred by the main character going all Nancy Drew and doing really dumb things in her pursuit of a serial killer the cops don't believe exists.

And that pretty well wraps up 2022, though my database says 123 books read and I can't figure out where the error is. Full report is here, and my reviews of most of the books mentioned by name are here.

See you on the other side, with a bright shiny new thread, which will be LyndaInOregon something-or-other.

Happy Reading!