Since our last meeting I seem to have gotten through five books, oddly enough, all fiction:
The Last Juror by John Grisham is a standard, one each, Grisham. This time a jury convicts a young man who is the scion of the local family of rich out laws but spares him the death penalty. Nine years later, jurors start turning up dead in increasingly suspicious circumstances. Intertwined with that story is a the story of the arrival of a young man who takes over the local newspaper and turns it into a valuable business. Not bad if you like Grisham.
Saturn’s Children by Charles Stross is an outstanding science fiction story about Freya Nakamichi 47 an android designed as a sex worker for now extinct humans. With the demise of humankind the universe has been taken over by robotic “aristos” who have enslaved most of the other robots. The few free ones left struggle to make ends meet while avoiding bankruptcy and subsequently being sold into slavery. Freya offends a local aristo, requiring her to flee off world. In order to obtain passage she accepts a courier gig to Mercury with the mysterious Jeeves Corporation. A host of adventures, attempted assassinations, intergalactic plots and sundry adventures ensues. The book was enthralling. Stross has done an amazing job of imagining a universe without humans, carried on by the now vanished human’s handiwork. I recommend it highly.
Britt Marie Was Here by Fredrik Backman is an account of another social misfit, this time a 60 year old housewife who is suddenly left by her husband of 20 odd years, finding fulfillment in the face of adversity and a new life. This book is structurally similar to A Man Called Ove by the same author if you remember me reading that a while ago. This time instead of a lonely man being drawn into the life of his immigrant neighbors, is a lonely woman moving to a small, economically dying town to manage a recreation center and winding up coaching a soccer team of misfit kids. It was a good book, if you’re in the mood for this sort of uplifting story.
Fighting Men USA by James Warner Bellah is a collection of short stories most of which are only peripherally involved in war. The stories were good, the writing was excellent, I enjoyed the book immensely. Readers should be warned that it is extremely difficult to find at a reasonable price though, and there aren’t any of Bellah’s familiar U.S. Cavalry stories here. These are much more cerebral and introspective.
57 for the year
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