Something of a thin month, readingwise, in part because of
(a) a couple of abandonments (I’m getting more ruthless about these in my dotage), in part because
(b) we have the men in to do a lot of hammering as they rebuild our downstairs, in part because
(c) I’m halfway through reading a novel that’ll get added to next month’s tally, but mainly because
(d) the first half or more of the month was a mad panic scamper to get my own latest book, Eureka!: Fifty Scientists who Shaped Our World, to the long-suffering, ever-patient Dan Harmon at Zest Books . . . who responded by sending me all his edits in double-quick time for me to, pretty please, go through pronto. Add in
(e) the cricket World T20, where England has reached the final (against the Windies, another moi-favored team), and you can see that March has been something of a helterskelter.
The links in the list below are to my often hasty, usually pretty jejune notes on GoodReads:
- My Brief History by Stephen Hawking
- Risk by Colin Harrison
- The Scribe by Matthew Guinn
- The Night Villa by Carol Goodman
- Doctored Evidence by Donna Leon
- Escape Artist: An Edna Ferber Mystery by Ed Ifkovic
- Monsieur Ibrahim and the Flowers of the Koran & Oscar and the Lady in Pink by Éric-Emmanuel Schmitt
- Don’t Open the Door! by Ursula Curtiss
- Prime Suspect by Lynda La Plante
Nothing blew my mind away except the Schmitt; the Hawking, the Ifkovic and the Curtiss were much enjoyed, and a couple of the others were disappointments.
April may be a bit thin, too. I imagine the proofs of Eureka! will be coming through, I’ve got to do a frantic catch-up on Noirish (at one point, because of finishing the book, this month I was down to a single written movie entry in the bank, as opposed to the usual dozen or more I like to have in hand), and I promised a story to Peter Coleborn of Alchemy Press for that fine company’s upcoming commemorative volume celebrating the far too short life of Joel Lane.
Not to mention that I have to be dragged off to Loews to choose new lighting fixtures for the downstairs; why is it that, every time I say, “That one!” and point, my beloved says, “You haven’t even looked at the others, damn you”?
(I’m still in trouble because, last time we were at Loews — to choose the kitchen tiles — I started giggling when the staffer said things like “softly illuminated teal at dawn” while showing us tiles that were, y’know, gray. Even worse, the staffer started giggling too.)