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| I do recognize that it should say "I'm, not im" |
When I travel, I tend to read a lot in a short space of time. It probably explains why I had a head ache when I returned home from my short trip to Ottawa this past weekend. I managed to finish 3 of the books I'd been working on while I was traveling. (Oh, I also got my normal 'flying flu' on the trip and am trying to get it out of my system.. cold capsules, don'tcha know. Maybe it was my daughter's dog, Anthony who made me sick!!) Just kidding, Jenn.
So, let's take a look and update what I've read. am starting, etc. since my last reading update 15 September. Onward and upward!
Books completed (Five books completed since last update)
1.
The Stepford Wives by
Ira Levin (Hor / 1972)
"The Stepford Wives is probably the 3rd book by Ira Levin that I've read. He can be hit and miss for me. I enjoyed Rosemary's Baby very much and thought Sliver was ok. I think The Stepford Wives falls somewhere in between. I have seen the movie, probably both movies based on the book and had a general idea of what the story was about.
Joanna Eberhart, a commercial photographer, and husband Walter, a financial lawyer, and their two kids move out of the city to the suburbs, to the town of Stepford. The story is basically Joanna's with everyone else playing more peripheral roles. Joanna begins to meet the neighbour women and is surprised to find that they really have no social lives. Their lives revolve around keeping their houses clean, supporting dear hubby. She invites some for lunch or just coffee but they are two busy cleaning.
Walter is invited to join the local Men's Club. It meets somewhat regularly. Joanna wonders why there are no women's clubs? She finally meets someone she can talk too, Barbara, who is boisterous, casual, messy... a normal person. They start approaching the other women and lo and behold, they are all too busy. Both women begin to find things quite strange in the town and Barbara, and eventually, begin to think something more sinister is going on..... and I don't think I should say any more about the plot. It's a very short story and things come to a head very quickly. It's an easy read that you'll get to the crux quite quickly.
Like the other Levin books I have read, the story is sparse, with not a whole lot of description. Other than Joanna and Barbara, you don't really get to know much about the other families, especially the woman. Well, they're all the same anyway.
But Levin still manages to ramp up the suspense steadily and quickly. It's not horrifying as a story but still tense and creepy. Written during the NOW movement, it plays on the stresses between women trying to be two things, a perfect mom and wife and also being able to have their own careers and interests. All I'll leave you with is.. don't be a Stepford Wife and, men, don't be Stepford Husbands. Treasure your partners for their intelligence, imagination, independence... 😎👍 (3.0 stars)"
2.
Gambit by
Rex Stout (Nero Wolfe #37 / 1962) I'm not reading this series in any particular order.
"Gambit is the 37th Nero Wolfe mystery by American author Rex Stout. I have not read this series in order. This was the 3rd book in the series that I completed. I have a few others sitting on my shelf awaiting my attention.
In this particular story, a young woman, Sally Blount asks for Wolfe's help to prove her father innocent of the murder of a chess master. This goes against the wishes of her father, mother and even her father's lawyer. Sally doesn't trust the lawyer. She thinks he has ulterior motives for keeping her father in prison, that motive being that he is in love with Sally's mother.
Wolfe is very reluctant to take the case but ultimately Sally persuades him. Jerin, the chess master, was killed with arsenic at a small chess tournament he participated in at the Gambit club, where he sat in another room and played against four of the club's best players. The moves were brought to Jerin by 3 messengers and his moves carried back. Sally's father, at one point, brought Jerin hot chocolate (Jerin's favorite drink) and after drinking it, Jerin collapsed, was brought to the hospital where he ultimately died. The police determined that Jerin died of arsenic poisoning. They arrested Mr. Blount because he'd delivered the chocolate and also cleaned up all of the evidence.
The story is told by Wolfe's assistant (alter ego / right hand man) Archie Goodwin. Wolfe never leaves his apartment in New York so Archie represents him in the investigations.
The investigation is interesting. We meet Sally's mother, Kalmus, the lawyer and the others involved, the 3 messengers and the doctor. It's an interesting investigation. Wolfe gradually wins over Kalmus and Mr. Blount and they agree that they also need Wolfe's assistance. There is another death that changes and speeds up the investigation until the ultimately satisfying ending.
I enjoy how the story is presented. Wolfe is almost a side line, appearing only when he is together with Archie. Archie is a blunt, smart assistant and he continually goads Wolfe, pushing him when he needs pushing, listening when he knows Wolfe is thinking. They are two sides of the same coin and their partnership makes the story even more interesting. Most enjoyable, even if I sort of had it figured out.. well, probably around the same time that Wolfe and Archie were sorting things out in their mind. Well written and enjoyable. (3.5 stars)"
3.
Dead Man's Boots by
Mike Carey (Felix Castor #3 / 2007). A nice dark series.
"Dead Men's Boots is the 3rd book in the Felix horror / fantasy by English author Mike Carey. I started this series after I had been reading the Dresden files as I thought it would be similar. In some ways it is, but in others it's a bit different, a bit darker maybe than Dresden. While Harry is a warlock PI, Mike Carey is an exorcist and the London where he resides is quite dystopic.
This story is quite involved. Felix attends the funeral of a fellow exorcist but the proceedings are interrupted by protesters, who are against exorcism, believing the risen dead have their own right to live. Oh it seems that that the dead have crawled out of their graves; some returning as zombie, some as weres, some just as spirits. As well as the protesters, a lawyer shows up just as the burial is complete. The wife of Felix's friend, John Gittings, moved the funeral up because she was expecting the lawyer. The lawyer had a will from John, where he asked to be cremated instead of buried.
Felix has some guilt about John's death. John was working on a big case and had asked Felix for assistance. But because of previous incidents where John's actions had almost got his fellow exorcists killed, Felix had ignored his calls. Felix agrees to help Cara sort out the matter.
What else is going on you ask? Well, another woman asks to hire Felix. Her husband is in jail on charges of murder. Felix agrees to investigate and see if there is a case to made that her husband is innocent. The man's wife believes her husband was possessed by a demon who did the killing.
And what else you ask? Well, let me tell you. Felix's ward, Rafi, is still in an asylum, possessed by Asmodeos (I may have the name a bit incorrect). There is an ongoing court case where an arch enemy of Felix and Pen (Rafi's other ward), Jenna-Jane wants to take Rafi to her institution and perform experiments on him.
Oh yes, as Felix investigates, he discovers what seems to be some sort of 'plot'??? where the spirits of deceased gangsters from London's East End are somehow still alive or inhabiting other bodies...
Yes, it's sort of confusing but written so well that the journey to see how these random events / activities all tie in together. It's a fascinating journey and Felix gets assistance, sometimes reluctantly, succubus Juliet and zombie tech wizard Nicky. They are both such excellent characters. As well we meet Moloch, another demon from the underworld, who is an enemy of Juliet, but who also may help as the story gets to its crisis.
The journey moves from London to a crematorium on the outskirts and over the ocean to Alabama. Many interesting things occur. I liked how Juliet reacted to being in the air. There is lots of action, it's very dark and gritty but it's just such an excellent, rich, involved story that draws you in and holds your interest. I still have the next couple on my book shelf and I'm looking forward to seeing what else Felix will do. An excellent horror / fantasy series. Carey also wrote the Girl with all the Gifts, as MR Carey and that was also quite good. Check him out. (4.0 stars)"
4.
Frankenstein by
Mary Shelley (Classic / 1818) The version that I read was the 3rd edition, published in 1831.
"Frankenstein by Mary Shelley was originally published in 1818. The copy that I read was republication of the 1831 3rd edition. I'll start by saying that the story was not what I expected at all. I've seen parts of the original movie, which as I recall was really nothing like the book. There was a TV series called Penny Dreadful, which featured Victor Frankenstein and the Monster and it had elements of the story. Anyway....
The story is told to a sailor who picked up Victor Frankenstein in the Far North. It is partially told to the sister of the sailor, R. Walton in the form of letters. It turns out that Victor Frankenstein is chasing after his monster. Why he is doing this will come out over the course of the story.
Victor Frankenstein is the focus of the story. It tells of his journey to Ingolstadt Germany to study at the university there. He has left his family in Geneva to attend the college. While there, he discovers how to reanimate dead bodies. In the story he refuses to tell how he did it as he doesn't want anyone else to try his experiment. The body of the monster opens its eyes in Victor's room and Victor is so shocked at the ugliness of the creature that he runs away and can't bear to see it again. Once he does go back to his room, he discovers that the Monster has left, leaving Victor filled with relief.
At a later date, he is told that his younger brother, William, has been murdered in Geneva. He rushes home and is shocked when he discovers that the Monster has murdered him. A servant girl of the Frankenstein family is blamed for the murder and for some reason, Victor lets her take the blame. (He does many things like this over the course of the story).
Trying to recover from the death of his brother and the maid, Victor goes on a tour of the Swiss mountains and discovers the Monster. Now the story switches from Victor's perspective to the Monster's. He tells Victor what has happened to him since he left Ingolstadt, quite a heart breaking story. He admits murdering William and setting up the maid. He tells Victor that he will leave the civilized world if Victor creates a bride for him......
I really don't want to get too much more into the story as it is worth exploring the story. It is filled with tragedy, pain, anguish and is somewhat scary. I found Victor to be a somewhat gutless character, always in anguish as each incident happens, but not being able to actually do anything about it. He's the architect of all of his problems, and sort of accepts that, but he just seems incapable of correcting them.
It's an interesting story. Considering it was written in the early 1800's, it's relatively easy to read. The writing style translates easily into current times. Amazing story for a young woman's first book and if you've never read, I do recommend. (4.0 stars)"
5.
Young Men in Spats by
P.G. Wodehouse (Humour / 1936). Sometimes you need something light and fluffy to get you over the humps.
"Young Men in Spats is a collection of humorous short stories by English writer, P. G. Wodehouse. It was originally released in 1936, with this Penguin edition released in 1971. What can you say about the stories but that they are light entertaining fluff.
Basically each story is told to a group of men in a club they all frequent and generally it's about one or the other of their friend's love lives, and for the most part, their unsuccessful love lives. They're hard to describe, but they're all entertaining. I think my favorite story was Uncle Fred Flits By, where Pongo goes out on an adventure with his Uncle Fred. They go to his old neighborhood, somehow get into a house, sort out a young girl's relationship, and trot off on their merry ways.
There is a bit of everything and if you want just light entertainment, check out one of Wodehouse's books. (3.5 stars)"
Currently Reading (All the books I've started since 15 September have been horror)
1.
The Lodger by
Marie Belloc Lowndes (1913). I've had this for a little while.
"The Buntings are an elderly London couple who have fallen on hard times. They take in a lodger with the strange name of Mr. Slueth, who pays handsomely for their shabby rooms. He seems to be a perfect gentleman but none the less they begin to suspect that he may be the Jack-the-Ripper-like serial killer known in the press as 'The Avenger'.
As the number of murders in the city begins to mount, and Mr. Bunting's teenage daughter from an earlier marriage comes to stay, the couple must decide what to do about the man in their upstairs rooms.
An early example of a psychological suspense story and a brilliant evocation of the fog-bound and gaslit streets of late Victorian London, The Lodger is a wonderfully compelling thriller."2. Off - Season by Jack Ketchum (Dead River #1 / 198). I've read one other book by Ketchum. This one is a bit of a slow build, but I can feel the tension.
"September. A beautiful New York editor retreats to a lonely cabin on a hill in the quiet Maine beach town of Dead River—off season—awaiting her sister and friends. Nearby, a savage human family with a taste for flesh lurks in the darkening woods, watching, waiting for the moon to rise and night to fall...
And before too many hours pass, five civilized, sophisticated people and one tired old country sheriff will learn just how primitive we all are beneath the surface...and that there are no limits at all to the will to survive."
3. Terminal by Brian Keene (2004) A new author for me.
"Tommy O’Brien once hoped to leave his run-down industrial hometown. But marriage and fatherhood have kept him running in place, working a job that doesn’t even pay the bills. And now he seems fated to stay for the rest of his life. Tommy’s just learned he’s going to die young– and soon. But he refuses to leave his family with less than nothing–especially now that he has nothing to lose.
Over a couple of beers with his best friends, John and Sherm, Tommy launches a bold scheme to provide for his family’s future. And though his plan will spin shockingly out of control, it will throw him together with a child whose touch can heal—and whose ultimate lesson is that there are far worse things than dying."
4. Bunny by Mona Awad (Bunny #1 / 2019). I'm not sure what I think of it so far.... Mean Girls plus something else???
"We were just these innocent girls in the night trying to make something beautiful. We nearly died. We very nearly did, didn't we?
Samantha Heather Mackey couldn't be more of an outsider in her small, highly selective MFA program at New England's Warren University. A scholarship student who prefers the company of her dark imagination to that of most people, she is utterly repelled by the rest of her fiction writing cohort--a clique of unbearably twee rich girls who call each other Bunny, and seem to move and speak as one.
But everything changes when Samantha receives an invitation to the Bunnies' fabled Smut Salon, and finds herself inexplicably drawn to their front door--ditching her only friend, Ava, in the process. As Samantha plunges deeper and deeper into the Bunnies' sinister yet saccharine world, beginning to take part in the ritualistic off-campus Workshop where they conjure their monstrous creations, the edges of reality begin to blur. Soon, her friendships with Ava and the Bunnies will be brought into deadly collision."
New Arrivals (8 new arrivals, some 2026 releases that I'd pre-ordered & 2 that I bought on my trip to Ottawa. Thank you Octopus Books)
1. Exit Party by Emily St. John Mandel (Dystopia / 2026) I've read a couple of her previous books
"Los Angeles, 2031: The first spring after the collapse of the United States, peacekeeping troops withdraw from the city, the Jacaranda trees blossom, and the curfew is finally lifted. Ari Waker and her roommate pass the gauntlet of bomb-sniffing dogs, the shanty towns, and the Red Cross tents as they walk across Silverlake to a party. The mood is ecstatic inside the apartment, people drink and dance, a woman wears a silver dress, pleated like tinfoil. And then: A shift. A bewildered twin, an uncanny doppelganger stumbles through the crowd and out into the night, and Kareem, the party’s host, vanishes into thin air.
As Ari Waker unravels the mystery of this inexplicable night, Emily St. John Mandel unfurls a story that takes us from a future America splintered by civil war to the seaside cliffs of Greece where weapons dealers hide in an elegant resort, and from the domed city of Paris to a colony on the moon. An unforgettable literary feat, Exit Party is a novel about the price of safety, the perils of the surveillance state, a requiem for a world not unlike our own, and a breathtaking story of resilience in the face of cataclysmic change."
2. Wickhills by Premee Mohamed (Fantasy / 2026). Another author I've enjoyed in the past.
"In the dangerous magical city of Wickhills, a streetwise secret agent is tasked with protecting a foreign defector from his pursuers... even at the threat of war.
Looking after a defecting scientist should have been Ferec's easiest mission. But now he's on the run from the intelligence agency she works for, dodging a handler who might have gone rogue, and relying on a secret patchwork of illicit resources and dodgy contacts. Turns out his defector might be carrying an apocalypse-level magical weapon ― and protecting it requires Ferec and his team to go underground, literally. Down here, the rules are very different... and the tense peace between every city in the world will shatter unless Ferec can drag their darkest secrets into the light."
3. Detective Aunty by Uzma Jalaluddin (Detective Aunty #1 / 2025). I bought #1 because I read that the 2nd story in this series was coming out in 2026.
"In the dangerous magical city of Wickhills, a streetwise secret agent is tasked with protecting a foreign defector from his pursuers... even at the threat of war.
Looking after a defecting scientist should have been Ferec's easiest mission. But now he's on the run from the intelligence agency she works for, dodging a handler who might have gone rogue, and relying on a secret patchwork of illicit resources and dodgy contacts. Turns out his defector might be carrying an apocalypse-level magical weapon ― and protecting it requires Ferec and his team to go underground, literally. Down here, the rules are very different... and the tense peace between every city in the world will shatter unless Ferec can drag their darkest secrets into the light."
4. Fourteen Days edited by Margaret Atwood (Fiction / 2024) A variety of authors came together to write this story, each writing a different part.
"Set in a Lower East Side tenement in the early days of the COVID-19 lockdowns, Fourteen Days is a surprising and irresistibly propulsive novel with an unusual twist: each character in this diverse, eccentric cast of New York neighbours has been secretly written by a different, major literary voice—from Margaret Atwood and Douglas Preston to Tommy Orange and Celeste Ng.
One week into the COVID-19 shutdown, tenants of a Lower East Side apartment building in Manhattan have begun to gather on the rooftop and tell stories. With each passing night, more and more neighbours gather, bringing chairs and milk crates and overturned pails. Gradually the tenants—some of whom have barely spoken to each other—become real neighbours. In this Decameron-like serial novel, general editor Margaret Atwood, Authors Guild president Douglas Preston, and a star-studded list of contributors create a beautiful ode to the people who couldn't get away from the city when the pandemic hit. A dazzling, heartwarming and ultimately surprising narrative, Fourteen Days reveals how beneath the horrible loss and suffering, some communities managed to become stronger.
Includes writing from:
Margaret Atwood, Douglas Preston, Celeste Ng, Emma Donoghue, Dave Eggers, John Grisham, Diana Gabaldon, Ishmael Reed, Meg Wolitzer, Luis Alberto Urrea, James Shapiro, Sylvia Day, Mary Pope Osborne, Monique Truong, Hampton Sides, R. L. Stine, Scott Turow, Tommy Orange, and more!"
5. The Naming of the Beasts by Mike Carey (Felix Castor #5 / 2009) This is such a good series.
"They say the road to Hell is paved with good intentions, but if you ask Castor he'll tell you there's quite a bit of arrogance and reckless stupidity lining the streets as well.
And he should know. There's only so many times you can play both sides against the middle and get away with it. Now, the inevitable moment of crisis has arrived and it's left Castor with blood on his hands. Well, not his hands, you understand; it's always someone else who pays the bill: friends, acquaintances, bystanders.
So Castor drowns his guilt in cheap whisky, while an innocent woman lies dead and her daughter comatose, his few remaining friends fear for their lives and there's a demon loose on the streets. But not just any demon - this one rides shotgun on his best friend's soul
And it can't be expelled without killing him.
Looks like Felix Castor's got some tough choices to make, because expel the demon he must or all Hell will break loose. Literally ..."
6. Ode to the Half - Broken by Suzanne Palmer (Sci Fi / 2026). I read about this. I think it might have been nominated for an award or it was listed in the CBC must read books. It did sound interesting.
"Forty years ago, the world nearly ended.
Be is an old robot who was there, and doesn’t want to think about what happened, or what role they played in that conflict. They have settled into a life of isolation in the abandoned ruins of an old mill in the former New York Botanical Gardens, disinterested in what has happened in the outside world since they stepped away from the war. Someone out there, though, has not forgotten about them, and when they are attacked, their person vandalized, one of their legs stolen, they set out to find the thief accompanied by a cyborg dog and a human mechanic.
The world has changed, but the recovery from the war is uneven and faltering, and Be begins to suspect a malicious hand trying to rekindle the old conflict and finish what was started. In order to stop them, Be needs to come to terms with both their own past and who they have become, and how everything and everyone else they knew has changed in their absence. Being left alone is no longer an option, and peace may be impossible.
This is a story about coming to terms with your past, with who you’ve become and who you still want to be: a tale of resilience and hope, an ode to those struggling to become whole in a world half-broken."
and two books from Ottawa
7. Chasing Homer by Laszlo Krasznahorkai (Fiction / 2019) The reasons I picked this up? It was thin. I liked the starkness of the cover. And it sounded interesting.
"In this thrilling chase narrative, a hunted man escapes certain death at breakneck speed—caroming through Europe and heading blindly South. Faster and faster, to escape the assassins on his heels, our protagonist flies forward, blending into crowds, adjusting to terrains, hopping on and off ferries, always desperately trying to stay a step ahead of certain death: the past did not exist for him, only what was current existed, he was a prisoner of the instant, and he rushed into this instant, an instant that had no continuation, just as it had no earlier version, and he would have told himself—had he had time to think about this between two instants—that he had no need either for past or future for neither existed. But, in fact, he had no time between two instants. Since there’s no such thing as two instants.
Krasznahorkai—celebrated for the exhilarating energy of his prose—outdoes himself in Chasing Homer, and has, moreover, envisioned the book as a collaborative enterprise, with a beautiful full-color painting by Max Neumann for each of its nineteen chapters to evoke our hero’s plight and--reaching out of the book proper--further propelling his flight by the wildly percussive music of Miklos Szilveszter, with a score for each chapter as well (to be accessed by the reader via QR codes printed in the book). Chasing Homer is a unique and incredibly swift tour of Laszlo’s world—a treat not to be missed."
8. HorrorStőr by Grady Hendrix (Horror / 2014) One of the book podcasters that I follow mentioned as a book to check out. I had recently purchased another by Hendrix. I'm not sure which I'll read first.
"Something strange is happening at the Orsk furniture superstore in Cleveland, Ohio. Every morning, employees arrive to find broken Kjerring bookshelves, shattered Glans water goblets, and smashed Liripip wardrobes. Sales are down, security cameras reveal nothing, and store managers are panicking.
To unravel the mystery, three employees volunteer to work a nine-hour dusk-till-dawn shift. In the dead of the night, they’ll patrol the empty showroom floor, investigate strange sights and sounds, and encounter horrors that defy the imagination.
A traditional haunted house story in a thoroughly contemporary setting, Horrorstör is designed to retain its luster and natural appearance for a lifetime of use. Pleasingly proportioned with generous French flaps and a softcover binding, Horrorstör delivers the psychological terror you need in the elegant package you deserve."
So there you go, folks. All caught up. Now to go check the mail. 😁😎👍
