Life and Things
It’s been a rough few weeks. I get tired more and more easily, and working my blog and writing reviews has gotten the back burner, though I did do lots of reading. I’ve increased my walking range. Endurance keeps increasing, but the trade-off is sleeping more.
On the doctor front… I finally have a UCSF primary care doctor! Why? The hepatologist is concerned by my blood pressure, which keeps creeping higher despite everything, so BP meds might also be in my future.
On April 29th, I (health willing), get to meet Laurie R King at the San Francisco Book Festival, where she’ll be at the MWA booth. I’m so excited! I may also be getting a kitten that same weekend. If we can find the right temperament, the kitten may get trained as a therapy animal for me. (Yep, cats are trainable) The hope is to help me keep cortisol and adrenaline levels down, since spikes in those levels cause the really bad pain flares.
Books read, reviewed, and posted/scheduled this past week
Swimming with Seals by Maggie DeVries, 3*
The Inspired Traveller’s Guide to Spiritual Places by Sarah Baxter, 4*
Notes of Magic by Jessica Bucher, 4*
Siuluk: The Last Tuniq by Nadia Saamurtok & illustrated by Rob Nix, 4*
Earth Science: Landforms by Mary Lindeen, 5*
Herodotus the Hedgehog by Jean-Luc Buquet, 5*
Hidden City by Sarah Grace Tuttle & Amy Schimler-Safford, 5*
How to be a Stoic by Massimo Pigliucci, 5*
The Jasmine Sneeze by Nadine Kaadan, 5*
The Seal Garden by Ian McAllister & Nicholas Read, 5*
SINdicate by JT Nicholas, 5*
Favourite Read(s) of the Week
Current Read
Next Up (maybe)
Building a Trade Empire by Paul E Horsman
High Merchant by Paul E Horsman
ISAN by Mary Ting
Starving Season by Seang M Seng, MD
The Unity Game by Leonora Meriel
Song Castle by Luke Waterson
Book Haul
‘Almost twenty years after forbidding him to contact her, Vita receives a letter from a man who has long stalked her from a distance. Once, Royce was her benefactor and she was one of his brightest protégées. Now Royce is ailing and Vita’s career as a filmmaker has stalled, and both have reasons for wanting to settle accounts. They enter into an intimate game of words, played according to shifting rules of engagement.
Beyond their murky shared history, they are both aware they can use each other to free themselves from deeper pasts. Vita is processing the shameful inheritance of her birthplace, and making sense of the disappearance of her beloved. Royce is haunted by memories of the untimely death of his first love, an archaeologist who worked in the Garden of the Fugitives in Pompeii. Between what’s been repressed and what has been disguised are disturbances that reach back through decades, even centuries. But not everything from the past is precious: each gorgeous age is built around a core of rottenness.
Profoundly addictive and unsettling, In the Garden of the Fugitives is a masterful novel of duplicity and counterplay, as brilliantly illuminating as it is surprising—about the obscure workings of guilt in the human psyche, the compulsion to create and control, and the dangerous morphing of desire into obsession.’
‘Ardor Benn is no ordinary thief – a master of wildly complex heists, he styles himself a Ruse Artist Extraordinaire.
When a mysterious priest hires him for the most daring ruse yet, Ardor knows he’ll need more than quick wit and sleight of hand. Assembling a dream team of forgers, disguisers, schemers and thieves, he sets out to steal from the most powerful king the realm has ever known.
But it soon becomes clear there’s more at stake than fame and glory – Ard and his team might just be the last hope for human civilisation.
With clever cons, non-stop action and unexpected twists, this novel breathes new life into a longstanding fan-favourite trope: the fantasy heist story. Perfect for fans of The Lies of Locke Lamora, The Legend of Eli Monpress and Theft of Swords’
