What I'm Reading Now

As usual, I'm leaving the SF off of this list, unless it was a SF re-read. The new SF I'm reading I either don't like at all or I review it for one of my magazines.

Laurie King, Knave of Diamonds

This is the new novel in King's Mary Russell series. That series is hit or miss lately, and this one is mostly a miss. It features Mary's uncle Jack Russell (yes, like the dog) who is a scapegrace and a conman and who apparently got involved with a plot to steal the crown jewels of Ireland way back when. I didn't find the uncle all that charming. There's some historical issues with how gay people were treated back in the early 20th century that might be of interest to anyone who knows little or nothing about LGBTQ history.  I'd recommend this to big fans of the series. If you're not a big fan, or haven't read any of them yet, don't start with this one.

Larry McMurtry, Terms of Endearment

This is a re-read. It has a deeply flawed structure -- the first 9/10ths of the book are about Aurora Greenway, a 50 year old woman living in Houston who has many, many beaus, ranging from an opera singer to a retired general to an oil millionaire (it's 1962, so he'd be a billionaire now). They're all hopelessly in love with her, and the book is about that, a bit, Aurora and her beaus. It's also about Houston in 1962 and Aurora's daughter Emma and her friends and husband, and about Aurora's maid Rosie and her family.

This part of the book is excellent. Highly recommend. McMurtry captures place and time beautifully, and the characters are great. This is a Houston without air conditioning, where widows can live on the income left by their husbands, and have a maid, a Houston without any interest in politics. Aurora is relatively wealthy; Emma and her friends are poor, but it's student poverty. Women keep house and go shopping. Men have jobs.

Warning: the characters are all white, and are unashamedly racist, even characters we're supposed to like. There's more racism in the working class characters, but at one point Emma says something appalling to Patsy -- not hateful, just casual racist. That too is, sadly, part of the place and time.

The last tenth of the book is about Emma and how she dies of cancer. WTF, is my only response to this part of the book. It's still well-written, but it's a the salt-truck ending. (This is named after a thing young writers love to do, which is instead of actually finding an ending for a story, they will run a character over with a salt-truck, or the equivalent.)

Moving On by McMurtry is a book with some of the same characters which avoids the salt-truck ending. I don't remember as much casual racism in that one either, though the characters there are also all white people.

Agatha Christie, Murder on the Orient Express

Somehow I missed this one back when I was reading all of Christie. It's entertaining. Also a lot of casual racism. It's aimed at 'foreigners,' though, rather than just black and brown people. For example, there's an Italian in the book. Mild fun is made of Americans, also, though that seems cultural, and like it's supposed to be funny, while the disparagement of the Italian is off-hand racism.

There was lots of French in the book, since Poriot is French. I enjoyed being able to read it. Other than that the book is meh.

I'd read this one only if you're a big Christie fan or you're interested in the history of mystery novels.

D.E. Stevenson, The Four Graces

This is a re-read. Stevenson writes what my kid calls "family" books, which is accurate: novels about families in a community in England between the wars and during WWI and just after. This one is set during WWII in a small village in southern England, and follows the mundane events during a few months in the life of four sisters (the four graces) who are the daughters of a vicar. As with most Stevenson books, nothing very terrible happens -- minor conflicts only. Stevenson is a comforting read, and this is one of her most comforting. It's part of a set of books that starts with Miss Buncle, and shares a few characters with the second and third book in that set, but it can be read on its own, which was how I first read it.

Anna Quindlen, Rise and Shine

Another "family" book. Two sisters whose parents died when they were young, so that the older sister has parented the younger one ever since. The older sister is a famous morning talk show host; the younger is a social worker. When the older sister's life begins falling apart (after she calls a guest an asshole on the air), the younger sister steps up to help deal. Like most Quindlen books, there's nice writing and good characters. There's also an interesting romance between the younger sister and a law enforcement officer. The older sisters flees to a remote Caribbean island, and Quindlen does a good job of giving us a sense of place about the community there. The big sister's kid is a charmer.

Read this if you like stories about families in a community.