WWW Wednesday - Guy Fawkes Day

WWW Wednesday is hosted by Taking on a World of Words.

The Three Ws are:

What are you currently reading?

What did you recently finish reading?

What do you think you’ll read next?

On a very windy Election Day

Currently Reading

I am listening to The Doorman by Chris Pavone and even though it is narrated by one of the best, Edoardo Ballerini, I am not liking it so far. The book is set in a fancy Upper West Side building and the doorman is being drawn into a conspiracy of robbery and murder. I’ve liked some of his other books, including Two Nights in Lisbon, The Travelers, and The Accident (not as good as the others), so am hoping this will improve.  I seem to recall his son was once on a baseball team wirh one of my nephews; his wife used to be the COO of Penguin Random House.

Lighter and more entertaining is Risky Business by Annabelle Slator in which a stressed-out entrepreneur is worried that being a woman is preventing her from getting funding so she pretends her twin brother is the face of the business and she is just his assistant.  You know this won't end well!

Recently Finished

I was excited to read Reese Witherspoon’s collaboration with Harlan Coben, Gone Before Goodbye. Maggie McCabe is a disgraced Army combat surgeon who needs money. Although she has lost her medical license, she is offered a secret and lucrative opportunity to conduct surgery on a Russian oligarch and she accepts, plunging herself into danger. I enjoyed this but got a little tired of Coben’s ironic editorializing, a sort of narrative habit of his.

The Librarians by Sherry Thomas was a 4 ½ star book for me. The main character, Hazel Lee, is mysterious, having moved from Singapore to Austin, Texas where she spent part of her childhood. She has a mysterious past but when she starts working at her local branch library, it turns out these quiet librarians have some deadly secrets of their own! My review.

Up Next

The Correspondent by Virginia Evans is my book group’s choice this month. It is so new and so popular that although I put it on hold seven weeks ago, I am still nowhere near the top. Fortunately, I saw there was a copy in the Express section of a library half an hour away and zipped over the other night to get it. I gather it’s about an obsessive letter writer, and I identify.

Off the Blog

Last week there was a book sale at the Wellesley Library. It was $10/bag on the final afternoon and I got a little carried away!

And 6 CDs I forgot to put in the photo!

Annoyingly, someone grabbed the book I most wanted just as I was inching toward it (never inch at a book sale - be bold or go home).

Guy Fawkes Day commemorates the failure of the Gunpowder Plot of 1605.  The plot to blow up Parliament probably would not have happened if King James I had been willing to grant greater religious tolerance to Catholics.  I can't say that religious tolerance has improved in the past 420 years, can you?