My goodness, I am so far behind in sharing my recent completed reads. I imagine a few of these will be crappier than normal since I’ve put them off so long. A Spy In The Struggle – Aya de León I’ve been working through a list of good, recent espionage novels that this and the next book both were on.…

I Love Rock ‘n’ Roll (Except When I Hate It) – Brian Boone Between both switching to the smaller, satellite Indy library near our house from the larger Carmel library and Covid, I don’t just go wonder the library stacks very often, surprising myself with books that speak to me as I pass them. That is how I found this…

The Alice Network – Kate Quinn A friend gave me this book awhile back, but I left it in my bookshelf for months before finally cracking it open. When I did, S told me she had read it on one of our vacations and loved it. We don’t read a lot of the same books, so I was both excited…

We have a house full of guests this week. My brother-in-law and his family from Boston are staying with us. So far that has meant lots of pool and play time as we’ve dodged the daily thunderstorms. It’s also C’s first real week of summer after wrapping summer school up last week. In a few hours I’m going to go…

My reading pace slacked off significantly over the past month. I only finished three books in May, and none of them should have taken more than a couple of days. Because of that, the first two books in this entry don’t get very good recaps as it has been too long since I finished them to write anything terribly coherent…

Time for some book chat. The Marsh King’s Daughter – Karen Dionne I hate it when books that come highly recommended don’t hit me with the same impact they hit others. I found this book on some “best new thrillers” list, and its jacket featured some positive blurbs from other authors I’ve enjoyed. But the story just didn’t work for…

Can’t Slow Down: How 1984 Became Pop’s Blockbuster Year – Michaelangelo Matos My spring break read seems like it was written directly for me. Matos takes a deep look at all of the music of 1984. It begins with Thriller dominating the music world in late 1983 and carried through to mid–1985 and Live Aid. Along the way he spends…

Well, shit. It appears that I’ve lost what was supposed to be my most recent Reader’s Notebook entry. I remember writing it and swore I posted it. (The books included were N.K. Jemisin’s The City We Became and John Le Carré’s The Spy Who Came in From the Cold.) Since this entry references one of those books, I was looking…

Three new books to share. Lives Laid Away – Stephen Mack Jones Jones’ second August Snow novel. Once again the former Detroit cop gets sucked into a case that goes far beyond the neighborhood he’s attempting to revitalize. In this case it deals with rogue ICE agents, sex trafficking, and racist biker gangs. If that seems like a lot, I…

Deacon King Kong – James McBride My To Read list is always in flux. I’m constantly adding books, like any good reader should. And also culling books, figuring if a title has been on the list for a few years and I haven’t gotten around to reading it yet, odds are I never will. The list tends to grow a…