When a body is uncovered during construction work in Mars' Sahara Dome, it provokes a crisis in Human-Disty relations which can only be solved by finding out who died and why.

I liked that the author's aliens really are aliens, part of cultures which are logical on their own terms but which we can't really understand. However, there were lots of references to earlier events in Flint's and DeRicci's careers only some of which I recognised.

#coffeeandabook

#FirstLineFridays
@ShyBookOwl

Got 1/3 of the way through on my 2nd attempt. I'm just not following her arguments. Probably my fault.

After a quick run down through the life (which we don't know much about (but more than I thought)), the author looks at Elizabethan theatre and the poems, then takes us through WS's output, play by play. A short final chapter looks at WS's influence and reputation. The descriptions of the plays were too short to be useful unless you already knew the play. I think this could have been shortened and more time spent on the final chapter.

#coffeeandabook

📚 📚 HAPPY WORLD BOOK DAY 2024 📚 📚

#coffeeandabook

The book opens with Steve Archer returning home in the morning having woken up in a strange bed, only to find the police at his apartment ready to arrest him for the murder of his boyfriend, Coy. The bulk of the book is a flashback telling how this all came about (which I did not realise for quite a while and was thus terribly confused), and the final 20-30 pages (out of 200) shows Steve looking for the real murderer to exonerate himself. ⬇

One of the richest men in Edinburgh is found dead in bed with traces of arsenic in his stomach. His son is accused of the murder but Raven's new fiancée believes him to be innocent and asks him to investigate.

Despite some well-worn tropes, the mystery all came together nicely enough but the social and medical background are still what attracts me to this series.

#coffeeandabook

HE WAS NAKED IN A STRANGE BED, one of those beds that stands in a closet all day, like a bad child.

#FirstLineFridays
@ShyBookOwl

Unknown to the rest of Earth's inhabitants, Enoch Wallace is looking after a station in a inter-stellar transportation network but affairs on Earth and in the Galactic Council are coming to a crisis.

This was a pioneering work of pastoral science fiction which still exerts its quiet attraction with on one level weird and wonderful goings-on but on another an uneventful slice of life until the last 1/3 of the book.

#ClassicLSFBC
@RamsFan1963

#FirstLineFridays
@ShyBookOwl

#ClassicLSFBC
@RamsFan1963

Alternates sections on the author's list of favourite philosophers and on themes and questions. Mostly concerned with the European tradition with occasional glances at India. Does what it says on the tin, serves as an introduction.

#dinnerandabook

An unfortunate example for a book published in 2020

TV-writer Elliott's 6-year relationship with Gus implodes after he books a session with a sex worker but he learns to be more comfortable with himself and starts to overcome his addictions.

A book that is probably funnier if you are part of the milieu depicted but there were too many refs to TV shows I don't watch or singers I'm only marginally aware of, if that, not to mention places & brands I don't recognise for me to really enjoy it

#coffeeandabook

👍👍👍

A nurse's patients are dying - but is she unwittingly spreading disease or is she a serial killer?

A good mystery set in a time when medical practitioners had noticed a better survival rate if they washed their hands between patients but didn't know why.

#sunshinewellness #bookclubchoice

#sunshinewellness

There is not a woman in this realm who does not understand what it is to be afraid.

#FirstLineFridays
@ShyBookOwl

In 1847 Edinburgh, Will Raven, apprentice to Professor of Midwifery James Young Simpson, and housemaid Sarah Fisher look into the death of a friend of Will's and a friend of Sarah's both written off as suicide.

The mystery was a bit predictable at times but the historical background was very well done. The professor was a real person, and his discovery of chloroform as an anaesthetic is one of the events in the book.

🪡 or 📚 ?

#sunlightwellness

Aidan and Liam are asked to guard an unwillingly-retired minor Russian oligarch in self-imposed exile in Monaco, who has had an attempt made on his life.

As they approach the big 40 the boys are wondering if they are aging out of the personal protection business and TBH I'm wondering the same about this series. This entry felt kind of meh. I also read the first chapter of the next one and am not feeling any urge to continue. Maybe another time.

Interesting book about why some linguists think all languages have an underlying universal grammar. The title seems a bit ironic since most of the book is about the restrictions and constraints on what languages can do.

#lunchandabook

#sunlightwellness

The author's memoir of how he broke his leg mountain climbing and his recovery. Because of neurological damage he couldn't recognise the leg as part of his own body and had to re-integrate it into his mental body image. He was able to use that experience to help him treat patients with neuropsychological problems by emphasising the need to listen to patients' accounts of their experiences rather than simply fixing the physical problem. ⬇

Saturday the 24th started overcast and sullen, but there was promise of fine weather later in the day.

#FirstLineFridays
@ShyBookOwl

After the family's return home from Iran, Darius gets a boyfriend, his dream job as an intern in a tea shop, and a spot on the school's soccer team.

There were times I felt the intricacies of tea connoisseurship and sports were taking over the story, but I still want to know how various relationships were going to develop further at the end. There wasn't really a cliffhanger, it just left me wanting the story to continue.

#coffeeandabook

Darius Kellner, a high school sophomore (which makes him what, 15 or 16?) and his family go on a trip to Yazd in Iran where he meets his mother's family for the first time.

I enjoyed this story of a teenage boy trying to navigate a culture unfamiliar to him when he doesn't really fit in at home either. ⬇

#coffeeandabook

#teaandabook

I recently found my stash of genmaicha, which had disappeared during my last move, so time to re-read this

Roman history told through a focus on the wives of the emperors from Livia to Gallia Placida (and I will never tire of saying somebody needs to make a biopic or series about Gallia Placida). Interesting and enjoyable, but it's 14 years old and already some of the “contemporary“ resonances and parallels are starting to age and I have to think for a bit to remember what they are about.

#AprilReadingPlans

The son of Daniel's assistant minister in the neighbouring parish is killed in the chapel of a disused WWII airbase in what looks like a ritual murder.

As with the first book, I enjoyed the slice of life scenes before and after the murder far more than the mystery itself because again the solution seemed to come out of nowhere. I will wishlist the next one because it's not out yet, but I'm in no hurry.

Audrey Clement did not flinch when half a bread roll, thrown with force from one side of Lord de Floures‘ dining table to the other, just missed her.

#FirstLineFridays
@ShyBookOwl

#coffeeandabook

Canon Daniel Clement finds a body in the church as he reads the evening prayers.

Apart from a vague feeling that his age didn't really match up with what we were told about his childhood, I didn't really catch on till quite far into the book that it was actually set in the late 1980s. I liked the setting, the characters, and the humour but the solution wasn't very satisfactory. I'll read the next one but I'm not sure if I'll continue after that.

#coffeeandabook

I find the author's books very readable with engaging characters and intriguing plots but her failure to do her homework, occasionally apparent in her Regency and Victorian books, becomes impossible to ignore here. At the very least she needs to understand what “patrician“, “plebeian“, and “equestrian“ actually meant in Rome.

#coffeeandabook

A crossover of the author's two detective series, one set before and after WW1 and one set in the 1950s, as the two detective duos join forces to discuss the mystery of a corpse found in 1914 in a packing case last opened 60 years before.

I found the investigation hard to follow - too many people with similar names who may or may not be the same person - but I like the 'tecs enough to give the series a second chance at some point.