October Reading Log

 

October 6:  All I’ve been reading this week is Project Hail Mary by Andy Weir. Fascinated by all the scientific jargon and what not.  Added the Cardiac Recovery Cookbook and well as The Diabetic Cookbook to our stacks to read as we are trying to figure out a more heart healthy meal plan. So much fun.

Saturday Night Movie: Haunted House!

One of my favorite authors is Nora Roberts. Our 52 Books author of the month is Nora Roberts and October 10th of this week just so happens to be her birthday. Roberts is the diva of romance, romantic suspense, action and adventure, and supernatural thrillers. I discovered her books back in 2007 and fell in lurve. I have one very full bookcase dedicated to all her books. She is a prolific writer and has written 242 novels which include multiple trilogies and stand alone books. All of which are unique and interesting. She writes stories that are full of world building, settings, and characters I have fallen in love with and makes me want to reread them over and over again. She also has written a unique futuristic police procedural under the pseudonym of J.D. Robb and recently published the 55th book in the ongoing series. I’ve reread them a number of times as well.

Roberts and her husband also own a bookstore in Maine called Turn the Page and a historic inn called Inn Boonsboro with rooms named after literary characters including Eve and Roark from the In Death series.

Her official blog, Fall Into The Story, contains updates on books, conversations with readers and insights into Nora’s home life.

Although romance is an element of most of her stories, she has written a number of books that are spooky, thrilling, chilling, and include ghosts or are post apocalyptic such as The Sign of Seven Trilogy or Chronicles of The One. All good choices for our October Spooktacular.

October 7:  Finished my bedtime reread from my shelves:  The Ancient One by T.A. Gordon which is a middle grade fantasy I purchased way back in the 90’s.  Kate is tested to her limits when she time travels back 500 years and has to save not only the forest, but the world from the machinations of Gashra.  The world building was amazing, quite descriptive, and Kate teams up with native Americans, talking owls, and other creatures.

“When Kate travels to Oregon for a quiet week at Aunt Melanie’s cottage, her plans are dashed by the discovery of a grove of giant redwood trees in nearby Lost Crater. Caught up in the struggle to help protect the redwood forest from loggers, Kate is thrown back in time five hundred years and finds herself facing the evil creature Gashra, who is bent on destroying the very same forest. In this extraordinary quest, a girl discovers that all living things are connected in ways she never expected, and that true friendship can reach across cultures, and even across centuries.”

In the middle of Project Hail Mary and enjoying the heck out of it. Highlighting all the science info  and annotating which has made me slow down and absorb the story.

October 9:  Welp! I bought way too many books during Amazon prime day deals. But I did think twice about every single one. LOL!

October 13: Still reading Project Hail Mary as well as The Art of Slow Writing.  Have been perusing multiple books on heart stuff and diabetes. Every single one of them is different and at cross purposes to the other.  Think we’ll stick with the keto diet and not worry about it. Hubby’s blood sugar was normal today, thanks to the Metformin. Hopefully he’ll be able to lower the dosage as time goes on.

October 18:  I started putting reasons in the amazon note area why it captured my attention.  At the end of the year I may delete it completely and start fresh later in the year. I’ve purchased some books, mainly ebooks, which sounded good at the time I found them, but when I go back later, can’t figure out why in the world I’d want to read it.  Note to self: less impulse shopping.  I’ve been going through my kindle list and removing the download for any book I don’t think I’ll read anytime soon and trying to narrow it down to a reasonable amount.  Same with physical TBR.

Speaking of next year, I’ll be doing a year long read of Les Miserables if anyone want to join me.

I finished Project Hail Mary which was excellent and ended up highlighting half the book. Need to write down a few quotes. Loved Royce and Rocky’s communication process, loved all the science, and the ingenuity of the characters, the flashbacks which explained the why of what they were trying to accomplish in the present.  By the end hated Stratt who was a real piece of work, and stopped at nothing to get what she wanted.

Also finished bedtime reread of Willa Cather’s Death comes for the Archbishop.  Didn’t remember much from the first read and deserves another reread at a time when I can highlight and annotate.

I have a few series to finish but don’t think I’ll finish them before the end of the year. My reading has slowed way down.  Stormlight Archive, Broken Earth, Lady Trent, Rivers of London, for instance.  I reorganized my physical and ebook TBR read shelves in effort to not have so many damn choices and get overwhelmed. But thanks to instagram keep seeing books I want and have acquired a few more asian author books. Although fantasy books still outweigh the rest. Lots of fat books. Beginning some new series including Robin Hobb’s Farseer Trilogy, RF. Kuang’s Poppy War, and others since obtained the first book.  Except for birthday and christmas, I’m pretty much done buying books.

October 20:  I have been a fan of Japanese literature for a very long time. I usually start the new reading year with stories written by Haruki Murakami which are full of magical realism. Fortunately he has a new book coming out in November, The City and It’s Uncertain Walls.

“We begin with a nameless young couple: a boy and a girl, teenagers in love. One day, she disappears . . . and her absence haunts him for the rest of his life.

Thus begins a search for this lost love that takes the man into middle age and on a journey between the real world and an other world – a mysterious, perhaps imaginary, walled town where unicorns roam, where a Gatekeeper determines who can enter and who must remain behind, and where shadows become untethered from their selves. Listening to his own dreams and premonitions, the man leaves his life in Tokyo behind and ventures to a small mountain town, where he becomes the head librarian, only to learn the mysterious circumstances surrounding the gentleman who had the job before him. As the seasons pass and the man grows more uncertain about the porous boundaries between these two worlds, he meets a strange young boy who helps him to see what he’s been missing all along.”

I’ve branched out quite a bit over the years and have acquired many more books written about and by Japanese authors. From Reading the City series,(I hope to eventually read them all) I have added the Book of Tokyo, A City in Short Fiction, with short stories written by Banana Yoshimoto and more:

“A shape-shifter arrives at Tokyo harbour in human form, set to embark on an unstoppable rampage through the city’s train network… A young woman is accompanied home one night by a reclusive student, and finds herself lured into a flat full of eerie Egyptian artefacts… A man suspects his young wife’s obsession with picnicking every weekend in the city’s parks hides a darker motive… At first, Tokyo appears in these stories as it does to many outsiders: a city of bewildering scale, awe-inspiring modernity, peculiar rules, unknowable secrets and, to some extent, danger. Characters observe their fellow citizens from afar, hesitant to stray from their daily routines to engage with them. But Tokyo being the city it is, random encounters inevitably take place – a naïve book collector, mistaken for a French speaker, is drawn into a world he never knew existed; a woman seeking psychiatric help finds herself in a taxi with an older man wanting to share his own peculiar revelations; a depressed divorcee accepts an unexpected lunch invitation to try Thai food for the very first time… The result in each story is a small but crucial change in perspective, a sampling of the unexpected yet simple pleasure of other people’s company. As one character puts it, ‘The world is full of delicious things, you know.”

My family are also big fans of the Godzilla movies created by Toho Studios in Japan which lead to us wanting to eventually travel to Japan. The closest we have gotten is through our armchair travels which is why I recently picked up Pico Iyer’s A Beginners Guide to Japan:

“In A Beginner’s Guide to Japan, Iyer draws on his years of experience—his travels, conversations, readings, and reflections—to craft a playful and profound book of surprising, brief, incisive glimpses into Japanese culture. He recounts his adventures and observations as he travels from a meditation hall to a love hotel, from West Point to Kyoto Station, and from dinner with Meryl Streep to an ill-fated call to the Apple service center in a series of provocations guaranteed topique the interest and curiosity of those who don’t know Japan—and to remind those who do of its myriad fascinations.”

I enjoy translated books from a variety of countries but there is an emotional richness to Japanese literature, with layers and complexity that will capture ones attention.

I’m currently in a non fiction mood and rereading Tolstoy and the Purple Chair. Dipping my toes in and out of The Art of Slow Writing, plus Your Head is a Houseboat by Campbell Walker, aka Struthless.

I pulled The Silent Cry by Kenzaburo Oe to read again. Read it years ago for college course and don’t remember a thing, probably because I skimmed through it fast, fast, fast, to do a synopsis for an assignment.

Saturday Night Movie: A Quiet Place!!!

October 26:  I’m halfway through Pargin’s I’m Starting to Worry about this Big Black Box of Doom and enjoying it.  Could it be considered intertextual. Not sure. Have a lot of books in my stacks but considering rereading Murakami’s Kafka on the Shore.   Picked up an interesting book at the comic book store – Sally’s Lament by Mari Mancusi, a middle grade twisted tale which jumped out at me from the shelf. They don’t normal stock a lot of normal books so grabbed it. Might read it next.

“Sally has mostly loved her creepy hometown of Halloween Town. But lately, she can’t help but want something more. In a place full of the frightening, you’d think living in the shadows wouldn’t feel so . . . isolating. She knows she could do so much more if she wasn’t always stuck in the lab of her creator, Dr. Finkelstein. Soon Sally is surprised to learn that the Pumpkin King, Jack, is longing for a change of his own. Determined to find a solution for them both, Sally follows a vision that could be the key to changing their fates.

But the more time Sally spends in the strange, jolly land of Christmas Town, the more suspicious she grows of the seemingly idyllic winter wonderland. What is lurking behind those dancing sugar plums? And what exactly does it mean to be put on the Naughty List? Will Sally be able to save the best of both towns—before it’s too late?”

Or maybe I should save it for Christmas. 🙂

Saturday Night Movie:  Poltergeist.

October 27:  Finished I’m Starting to Worry About This Black Box of Doom. It’s a crazy thrill ride from California to Washington DC, him vs her conversations, adulthood, and relationships, how the internet can shape your thinking, plus all the mayhem that occurs when the conspiracy theorists on the internet follow your journey. And through it all, what was in that box. The answer was a surprise.  Enjoyed it from beginning to end.  Definitely 5 stars

October 30:  Currently reading Dean Koontz Elsewhere. Forgotten how much I love Koontz imagery in his books.

“Since his wife, Michelle, left seven years ago, Jeffy Coltrane has worked to maintain a normal life for himself and his eleven-year-old daughter, Amity, in Suavidad Beach. It’s a quiet life, until a local eccentric known as Spooky Ed shows up on their doorstep.

Ed entrusts Jeffy with hiding a strange and dangerous object—something he calls “the key to everything”—and tells Jeffy that he must never use the device. But after a visit from a group of ominous men, Jeffy and Amity find themselves accidentally activating the key and discovering an extraordinary truth. The device allows them to jump between parallel planes at once familiar and bizarre, wondrous and terrifying. And Jeffy and Amity can’t help but wonder, could Michelle be just a click away?

Jeffy and Amity aren’t the only ones interested in the device. A man with a dark purpose is in pursuit, determined to use its grand potential for profound evil. Unless Amity and Jeffy can outwit him, the place they call home may never be safe again.”   Rating *****

I bravely read my first Dean Koontz book a few years ago in which my requirements were no blood and guts horror because I’m squeamish. However, love psychological thrillers and the violence offstage. Thrills and chills. So waded through his stories and found the one I wanted to start with – By the Light of the Moon which was scary crazy but oh so good.  After I read Stephen King’s On Writing, did the same thing and found Duma Key which was oh so crazy chilling good.  Which then lead to Under the Dome.   I may be crazy because I like books that send cold chills up my spine. I’ve also found some Christian writers who do the same thing.  But their stories are a little bit more spookier since it’s good against evil.

Added to my physical TBR purchased through Penguin Random House – The Penguin Book of Dragons and Decagon House Murders.

Went through my TBR and discovered I have an overabundance of historical fiction and fantasy, followed by at least 10 each of  thrillers, mysteries, science fiction, translated of which 9 are japanese books, dragons, philosophy,  nonfiction, and romance.  Guess I have my 10 categories for next year already.

October 31:  Went to the comic book store and Barnes and Noble with James today. Added more books to my TBR. I’m such a non conformist, I didn’t wanna get books all the booktubers are talking up,  but wanted to read Backman and more by Haig, so got ones that captured my interest.