What Are You Reading?

[Pixelated]

I've uncovered a few of my Harry Potter books so have reread them.

Also I'm about 10 pages away from the end of Harry Turtledove's "Ruled Britannia," in which he speculates about life in England if the Spanish Armada hadn't been smashed to matchsticks by a raging sea and howling winds.

I also re-read Ben Aaronovitch's "Midnight Riot" in which a young PC based in London finds a witness to a murder ... unfortunately, the witness is himself a ghost. He ends up working in a one-man unit (now a two-man unit) that investigations crimes involving magic and the uncanny in general. I liked it; there's more books in the series and I look forward to reading them.

Also re-read Anne Ursu's "The Shadow Thieves," technically a Young Adult novel about a young girl whose cousin comes from London to stay with her family and unfortunately brings a nasty guy from the Greek Underworld (named Phil) trailing after him ... Phil's goal being to depose Hades and take over the Underworld himself.

Just started re-reading one of my numerous historical mysteries: Michael Jecks' "The Mad Monk at Gidleigh." It's one of his series involving Baldwin Furnshill, former Templar (this is after the destruction of the Templar Order, so he is of course keeping very quiet about this part of his background) and now Keeper of the King's Peace; and Bailiff Simon Puttock. In this book a young woman, reportedly made pregnant by the local priest (and no, it's made very clear it wasn't rape) is found murdered, and the young priest is on the run. Her family and villagers believe the priest is guilty; Furnshill and Puttock aren't so sure.

[Ironclad Alibi]

This past weekend I read two books:

The Immortality Option by James P. Hogan (sequel to Code of the Lifemaker)

The Cradle of Saturn by James P. Hogan

And started on V-3 by Ib Melchior

[Pixelated]

Forgot to add to that last list a mystery novel titled "Fools and Mortals" by Bernard Cornwell, whose work I really like. It's set in Elizabethan England and the narrator is Richard Shakespeare, younger brother of playwright William.

One of Shakespeare's manuscripts goes missing, and Richard is a suspect -- he's always been complaining about getting poor parts with correspondingly low money, and when the manuscript vanishes, it's believed he's been going to the competition in hopes of getting a better deal.

My only complaint about the novel is that William obviously has some kind of major feud going on with Richard and unless I missed something, it's never explained what's at the bottom of it.

[Ghel]

My partner bought me The Name of the Wind by Patrick Rothfuss for Christmas, so I'm currently reading that. I feared such a long book would be a slog, but I like the storytelling style so far.

[mjr]

I have some stuff in queue to read...

But my problem right now is a squinty one, if you catch my drift. Reading off of a computer screen is fine right now, the problem is when I try to read books, I squint a lot, and they're actually hard to read.

I have an appointment with an eye doc coming up this weekend, so hopefully I can get that resolved.