What are you reading the week of March 25, 2023?

Had an extremely busy week at work. I managed to read Maigret and the Good People of Montparnasse which was another good entry in the series. This is book 58 in the series of 75, so I have about 17 more books to go.

I still working on Essays in Modern Ukrainian History by Ivan Rudnytsky. Unless work lets up, this is going to take me another couple of weeks.

Finished up Chobham Armour, which was easy enough since the book does have something of the flavor of a catalog. About 50% done with The Murder of Professor Schlick. About 90% done with Valkyrie: North American's Mach 3 Superbomber. Will wrap up the week and the month with Quantum of Nightmares.

Currently reading:
SF/F
A Fugue in Time by Rumer Godden
The Race by Nina Allan
Other
Buried in Secret by Viveca Sten

River of the Gods: Genius, Courage and Betrayal in the Search for the Source of the Nile
Candice Millard
4/5 stars
Millard relates the tale of English explorers Richard Burton and John Hanning Speke, along with the guide/slave Sidi Mubarak Bombay as they try to find the source of the Nile River in the 19th century and reap the rewards from the Royal Geographical Society who was offering a prize for those who found it first! However, the two men clashed, and this undertaking would prove too much as they separated. Fascinating! Geography/Africa

I finished up my reread of A Manual for Cleaning Women by Lucia Berlin. This is a wonderful collection of short stories, full of writing that manages to be heartbreaking and life affirming at the same time. The tales are loosely interconnected and reflective of Berlin's own life. Teaching, single parenthood, childhood time spent in South America, dealing with the grim lifestyle of the alcoholic and the relative peace of recovery, odd jobs, teaching, lovers and marriages, loneliness, spending time in Mexico City with her sister who is dying of cancer . . . the stories in this collection circle back around to these themes, inspecting them from a variety of perspectives. The observations are acute and Berlin's sentence-and paragraph-level writing often made me stop and reread. The title story is a tour de force, the building of a life on the page, minute detail by detail.

Next up for me will be The Lady from Zagreb, the 10th book in Philip Kerr's brilliant Bernie Gunther noir series of novels set mostly in Germany just before, during and after World War 2.

For some time I've been reading my way through The Sot-Weed Factor. It's a wild and wooly ride which I am nearly 3/4 through

Finished Buried in Secret by Viveca Sten. Ran a little long. Added The Silent Wife by Karin Slaughter to my rotation.

>6 snash: Ah, Barth! I took a seminar in grad school on John Barth and John Hawkes. That's some crazy reading. I enjoyed the Barth a lot. The Hawkes was more a sort of intellectual exercise, mostly. Glad you're enjoying The Sot-Weed Factor.

Hard week. Lost my job. Didn't read much.

I'm listening to an audiobook thriller - The Night she Disappeared by Lisa Jewell. She tells good stories.

Am a couple of chapters into A Question of Identity by Susan Hill.

>9 ahef1963: So sorry about your job! Hope you get a new one soon! My husband lost his job a few months ago and is now working again.

Enjoying this Libby audio ~

Worthy Opponents: A Novel
by Danielle Steel

The River
Peter Heller
4/5 stars
Wynn and Jack take off canoeing in Canada and encounter a couple fighting but they disappear. Later on they find the woman injured and they can't leave her because a forest fire has taken over. They grab the woman and take her in their boat but are afraid that the husband may come after them. Heller doesn't disappoint in this novel.

>9 ahef1963: Hope you find a new (and better) job soon!

Invisible Women – Caroline Criado Pérez
Digital audiobook read by the author
5*****

Subtitle: Data Bias In a World Designed For Men

From the preface:
Most of recorded human history is one big data gap. Starting with the theory of Man the Hunter, the chroniclers of the past have left little space for women’s role in the evolution of humanity, whether cultural or biological. Instead, the lives of men have been taken to represent those of humans overall. When it comes to the lives of the other half of humanity, there is often nothing but silence.
. And these silences are everywhere. Our entire culture is riddled with them. Films, news, literature, science, city planning, economics. … They are all marked – disfigured – by a female-shaped ‘absent presence’. This is the gender data gap.
. The gender data gap isn’t just about silence. These silences, these gaps, have consequences. They impact on women’s lives every day. The impact can be relatively minor. Shivering in offices set to a male temperature norm, for example, or struggling to reach a top shelf set at a male height norm. Irritating, certainly …
. But not life-threatening. Not like crashing in a car whose safety measures don’t account for women’s measurements. Not like having your heart attack go undiagnosed because your symptoms are deemed ‘atypical’. For these women, the consequences of living in a world built around male data can be deadly.

I really can’t add much to that. Read the book. Fascinating, engaging, surprising, infuriating, inspiring. Criado Pérez has done extensive research, but she does more than just present her findings. Her writing is clear, logical, and compelling.

I listened to the audiobook, which Criado Pérez narrates herself. I felt as if I were attending a master class with her as the lecturer. She is clearly passionate about the subject. I cannot imagine anyone else doing a better job on the audio version.

>9 ahef1963: Nuts. I hope something better comes along soon for you.

>14 BookConcierge: That really does sound fascinating.

I'm about to finish up Carl Hiaasen's Squeeze Me which has been very entertaining. It's been ages since I read one of his books.

The new thread is up over here.