Read Die Trying by Lee Child. Book 2 of Jack Reacher series. It was a fun book, though I wasn’t fan of how passive Reacher was in most of the book, most of the action happens near the end. Was hoping for more action throughout the book. Still fun though, going to get more of these.
Now, continuing with my Mistborn re-read. Started The Well of Ascension by Brandon Sanderson. It’s Book 2 in the series, and for some reason I don’t recall much of what happens in this one. While I didn’t recall the details of the first one either, I recalled most of the plot, for this one though, I only remember the ending, and maybe one other scene. Everything else I thought happened in 2, would happen in 3. So, looking forward to reading it and finding out!
What about all of you? What have you been reading or listening to lately?
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So for Karen Rose, it’s something between mystery/crime procedural/thriller basically? The main plot is the same broad strokes genre as Reacher. The “romance” part is that each book is told from the perspective of a new pair of people. They’re generally pretty damaged, they’re thrust together in the course of the mystery, and the “romance” explains/heals some of their issues. It’s very important to the character development, and is the “focus” of the book from some perspectives, but I don’t think you have to be interested in pure romance books to be into it. The villains are genuine (human) monsters. (I feel the need to warn that, while offscreen, there are people abducting, sexually assaulting, selling kids, and some characters have experienced similar, because that’s a hard line for some people). There are also explicit sex scenes between the consenting adults, but it already wasn’t a book for kids.
Anyways, the reason I like her so much is very similar to the reason I like Sanderson so much. You get into the head of her characters, and can really understand them. She also (whether deliberate or just because of the way each story focuses on two new people) does an excellent job of showing the dichotomy between how we see ourselves and how other people see us that we call spotlight effect. Some kind of similar genre authors I can think of are Catherine Coulter, Leslie Tentler, Sandra Brown
I read a little of Evanovich’s romance, but her other series I meant were Lizzy and Diesel, Knight and Moon, and Gabriela Rose mostly. Her stories are just whacky. A little more grounded than like South Park, and not as actively provocative, but characters as weird and the tone is just generally in that ballpark. Stephanie Plum’s world is crazy, she’s an intelligent and persistent bounty hunter who’s not super talented, but she just kind of accepts everyone’s insanity and keeps moving forward. She doesn’t bat an eye when her partner thinks she’s a vampire (OK, so she rolls her eyes a little, but then she rolls with it). It’s kind of like how Jack Reacher’s tone downplays the trail of brutality he leaves behind him, but she downplays outright ridiculousness.
The style of the others is similar, with different characters and different stakes. There are moments that are real, but basically they’re comedy. Reading Sue Grafton’s Kinsey Milhone series (well, until yesterday when I stopped because Wind and Truth released), I can feel that Stephanie Plum took a little inspiration from her (they both think a peanut butter and pickle sandwich is food?), but only in terms of the character herself. The Milhone books are aiming more for old hard boiled detective stories and far more grounded in reality. The only other series that quite feels the same to me as Stephanie Plum (and I’ve read a lot chasing the style) is Jana DeLeon’s Miss Fortune series. Her character is way more skilled and just generally badass, but it very much captures the absurdist, slapstick, almost three stooges comedy feel a lot of the time.
(Is it a wall of text yet? This format doesn’t lend itself super well to my habit to talk a lot.)
Thanks for such a detailed response. Adding both series to my list!
For Karen Rose, I wouldn’t necessarily go way back to the beginning. Her early stuff is still good, but each city is almost standalone, and she has mastered her craft over time. There are characters from the first book who are in later ones, but I wouldn’t worry about that. If you get hooked you can think of them as a prequel.
Sacramento is really good and 3 books (Starting with Say You’re Sorry). Cincinnati has my singular favorite book because something about one of the characters makes me like her especially (I couldn’t tell you what). That starts with Closer than You Think. Baltimore (You Belong to Me) or New Orleans (Quarter to Midnight) are also good entry points.
I love them all and usually read them chronologically, but think of it kind of like the Cosmere books. Rose’s individual stories can be read standalone, but the cities have a stronger narrative connection within each arc. They’re each cohesive series that happen to be in a universe where characters can move between them. (Except pretty strictly grounded in reality. They’re taking planes and cars and phone calls, not perpendicularities.)
(Plum you can do whatever. They’re very like Reacher in terms of having a little continuity between stories but expecting most readers not to read sequentially.)
Ah cool. I feel umm… uncomfortable if not starting any series from the start, and in correct published order. So, unless I am having difficulty finding the books, I would try to start from the first one, but I’ll keep it in mind that her work improves with time.
I am doing the same thing with Reacher, reading them in the published order.
Lol, that’s me trying to rein it in. It’s why I want to eventually get to a good way to self host my reading history with series as focal points. I won’t go into specific books very often, but I could very easily write some walls of texts about what it is about specific authors/series that I like.
And book recommendations posts are even worse, because I’m trying to boil all 100 authors with different styles I want to suggest into like a sentence each, and decide who to actually include. (Or get boring and suggest Karen Rose every time). It’s way easier for me to have some idea what someone is into to so I can provide variety that might be relevant to what they like to read.
lol, no need to rein in. Go wild! You can optionally provide a TL;DR for people who may not be interested in specific topic / author / series, but this group is full of readers, so I doubt most people would be annoyed by long posts.
Yeah, recommending something is difficult, specially when you don’t other people’s interest and what kind of books they like.
If talking about me, I read pretty much everything, though my main interest is in fantasy / sci-fi. I’ll pick any book by Brandon Sanderson, Jim Butcher, Terry Pratchett, Andy Weir, John Scalzi, even if I don’t know what it’s about. Nowadays though, trying to expand my reading horizon, with some mystery and crime, started with Elly Griffith’s Ruth Galloway series, but for some reason didn’t like them too much. Switched to Reacher after that, but want to add 2-3 other series into the mix.
OK, how about Glass and Steele as another suggestion for a fantasy enjoyer looking to add some mystery?
It’s a story of Wild West cowboys coming to Victorian England in search of a magician, while magic is functionally illegal because the respective guilds ban magicians from membership. I don’t want to spoil anything by going too far explaining the premise, but there’s a core investigation each book that expands their understanding of magic in the process.
The magic doesn’t have the depth of epic fantasy like Sanderson, but it is unique and fits well with the premise. This series (and some other CJ Archer stuff) is another of the ones I come back to every once in a while. It’s definitely on the lighter read side, but I enjoy the worlds she builds and her characters.
But mystery is my jam, so if you want about 100 long light mystery series, I’m your man lol.
That sounds interesting, will check it out. Thanks for the recommendation!
And I’ll definitely take you up on that offer. Going to check out Karen Rose and Stephanie Plum first to see how I like them.