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To avoid burying my latest read in my two previous, lengthy comments --

Just finished The Second Mrs. Hockaday, by Susan Rivers. It's a mostly epistolary novel about a young woman during the Civil War who is accused of murder. It was excellent.

Just started The Dickens Boy, by Thomas Keneally. It's a novel about Charles Dickens' tenth child, Edward, who is sent to Australia to live. I'm only about 50 pages in, but it seems quite good so far.

Next in line is Horse, by Geraldine Brooks.
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Scrolling down on the other postings, I see folks have read Where the Crawdads Sing. Delia Owens also spoke same literary conference where I heard Elizabeth George all those years ago, but Owens was the speaker in 2020, a week before the world locked down.

She was a really odd woman, and it made the book a little less baffling. I didn't like Crawdads because the premise was preposterous and she doesn't have a good grasp on pacing for fiction writing. However, she was a very shy, odd woman, and it turned out that she had lived in Africa for 20 years almost entirely on her own studying animals.

Her main character in Crawdads was obviously based on her own experience of living alone for so long, but honestly, her character functioned better in public situations than Delia Owens did. She was barely able to give her speech, as she was petrified to face a room full of 800 women eager to hang on her every word, then she wouldn't sign any books for anyone which is a major part of this authors conference each year.

She left a pretty bad taste in a lot of people's mouths, but I wonder if she was pressured by her publisher to make these appearances. The book certainly didn't need any extra publicity from this event, as I doubt there were many in attendance who hadn't read it already.

The event I'm talking about is called Literary Women, and it's the Long Beach Festival of Authors. I've been attending since the first one back in the early 80s, except for several years when I lived out of state, and I've heard everyone from Barbara Kingsolver to Maya Angelou to Sharon Kay Penman to Sue Grafton. It's a great event to attend if you live in Southern California -- literarywomen.org.
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Interesting tidbit about Elizabeth George, the novelist --

I heard her speak about 35 years ago when her first book, A Great Deliverance, had just come out. She was a professor at our local community college in Huntington Beach, CA, and people were shocked to find out she wasn't British. She was a massive Anglophile, though, and traveled to England every opportunity, but she couldn't make a lot of trips on a professor's salary.

She was just finishing up her second book in the Detective Lynley series, and she said she'd finally come up with the perfect way to at least offset some of the expense of her travels. She said she'd book a trip, travel around until she had an idea for a book, then research it while she was there. After she came home, she'd write the book and write off the trip as a business expense.

Pretty smart cookie, because now she's made enough money on those novels to buy her own home in England, although I believe she primarily lives in Seattle now.
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P.S.
I didn't read it either.
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Guessing that this best-selling author is not the Elizabeth George you are reading Gershun, Golden, Glad....?

A Woman After God's Own Heart® Growth and Study Guide Feb 1, 2015
by Elizabeth George
 
$5.99
Discover the deep and lasting fulfillment that comes when you make the decision to follow God in every area of your life.
A Woman After God's Own Heart® Growth & Study Guide will help you take the scriptural guidance found in Elizabeth George's bestselling book A Woman After God's Own Heart® and apply it to your own season of life. Perfect for women's Bible study groups or individual study, this fun and challenging resource will give you the necessary tools for living out God's priorities when it comes to your husband, your children, your home, your walk with the Lord, and your ministry.
With thought-provoking discussion questions, practical exercises, and a quiet time calendar, this guide will nurture you toward greater spiritual maturity—the kind that makes you a woman after God's own heart.
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No, glad. I haven't read Michael Connelly. As I read so many books I try to keep the price down. Kindle Unlimited has a broad selection but not the best writers unless you go for books written years ago. It's well worth it for me but I have to do some searching to find books I like. Connelly would be on the expensive side as once I read one and like it I will read everything from that author and at about-3 books a week it adds up. Elizabeth George is more affordable. I try to stay under $10 a book apart from KU.
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I have read Elizabeth George before. I don't remember which one, but I can picture the cover, I think, browns and gold text, maybe.

Golden, have you ever read Michael Connelly?
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I'm currently reading 'Taming of the Queen' by Phillippa Gregory. I love her books. This one is about Kateryn Parr Henry VIII's last wife.
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Thx, Gershun. Looks like my kind of thing. I do stray from kindle unlimited if I think it is worth it. I love the descriptions of English countryside.
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Have you read any Elizabeth George books Golden? She writes good crime novels.
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Still reading who-dun-its, but having really enjoyed them for months I now am having trouble finding an author I like. One I read recently was well written but there was a little too much perversion in it for me. Others have too much brutality or Satanism, but I guess this is what sells books these days. I may have to go back to Agatha.
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Reading:
Covid-19 and the Global Predators
We are the Prey

Peter R. Breggin, M.D.
Ginger Ross Breggin

Dr. Peter Breggin is said to be the psychiatrist's conscience.
I was interested in his comments long ago about psychiatric medications, psychoactive drugs-and the facts that no one really knows what these drugs do to the brain.
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Just finished reading a series by Jeanne Birdsall about a family called the Penderwicks. It's been delightful to read these - took me back to when I was much younger and read everything I could get my hands on. :) Highly recommend for very light reading. Also suitable for reading aloud to someone - no bad language or uncomfortable situations...
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New Baldacci book. "Dream Town"
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I read Where the Crawdads Sing a few years ago and saw the move yesterday. Enjoyed the book and the movie. Also saw the movie Mrs. Harris goes to Paris and thoroughly enjoyed it. Didn’t know until I was leaving the theater that it was from a book written over 50 years ago. It’s been a very long time since I’ve seen a movie with zero violence, zero bad words, and zero sex, it was rather nice. Now reading Everything I Never Told You be Celeste Ng, it’s been around for a while but I’m just now getting to it
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Just finished crawdads, highly recommended! Now I can see the movie.

Quite the turn of events! Who else has read it?
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Where the Crawdads Sing. I am sure others of you are as well. About 100 kindle pages into. Very good, so far. I want to see the movie, it is in town, but will wait until I finish the book.
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Not a book, but has anyone started watching the series "The Old Man" on FX? I have watched two episodes now. I.Will say it is very strange, odd and mysterious.
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Reading the new John Sandford book. Not as good as his others, or maybe I'm not used to the new characters.
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VegasLady, I ordered a sample of your Girl-lost-in-the-Amazon book. That one has me VERY intrigued. Thanks for the suggestion.
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Currently binge-reading Donna Leon's mystery books, featuring Guido Brunetti, a Venetian detective. They are delicious!
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Just finished Pathological: My Eight Misdiagnoses. So interresting. The author's basic premise that the new DSM-5 has a diagnosis for each and every one of us, and pills to match, that EVERYONE is now on some spectrum of some kind. As someone who has dealt with mental illness in extended family I am fascinated by Sarah Fay's book.
Now reading a Paula Hawkins. Somehow I mistook her for Ruth Ware who I don't care for, and now realize that Paula is the one who wrote Girl on the Train, so am enjoying her multi-character, twisty turny round with A Slow Fire Burning. Holds my attention just fine.
Also on bedside table is the Marjorie Kinnan Rawlings bio by Ann McCrutchan, The Life She Wished to Live.
Of all the gifts life has bestowed, the love of reading is one of the very best.
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I've been reading some of Elizabeth Gunn's books. I particularly like the Jake Hines series. I'm doing OK so far finding something readable in Kindle Unlimited.
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Someone gave me the "Outlander" boxed set for Christmas. I'd started the first book years ago, and never finished it. This time I got hooked--real escapism--and I'm now on book 4. Recently re-read "Station Eleven" by Emily St. John Mandel, after watching the series based on the book. Film version was rather different than the book, but the essence was the same and both are very good if you like post-apocalyptic fiction. I love Margaret Atwood's books in that genre, and pretty much anything else by her. I used to be in a book club where we read some great stuff, but we moved to another city over four years ago and I've never managed to make connections for another book club (Covid and caregiving haven't helped).
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"The Kitchen Front" by Jennifer Ryan. Great descriptions of wartime British cooking and an easy read, just the kind to get my mind off my worries The ending was predictable but it was a fun book.
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When I Fell From The Sky....true story of 17 year old girl who was the only survivor of a plane crash over the Amazon.
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Anything by Janet Evanovitch. Her Stephanie Plum series is a fun, fast romp that are easy to read and takes you out of yourself.
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What a great topic. My go-to author whenever I want to get away from it all is P.G. Wodehouse. I've read all the Bertie and Jeeves, Blandings Castle, all the short stories, the two Psmiths, and the Mulliner stories. More than once. He wrote other books but I haven't been able to get into them. But the way things are going, I'll probably have to!
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Just finished a MARVELOUS and short read that neither my partner nor I could put down until finisihed.
A Molecule Away From Madness by neurologist and Alzheimer's MD Sara Manning Peskin.
It is amazing. One story is a girl who SUDDENLY watches The Walking Dead obsessively and then descends into a world in which she believes she is living the Zombie Apocalypse. Diagnosed by her Mom online with ovarian tumor that caused release of antibodies that caused this............she had been three months in a psych unit.
From our own perspective there is the stories of Frontal temporal dementia, Alzheimer's and other dementias. Amazing amazing book.
I cannot recommend this one hghly enough. Each story in it is mesmerizing.
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Rereading Sandra Kring novels always great stories usually told through child’s wise eyes.Leaves reader with heartfelt lessons. Carry Me Home, How High the Moon, Book of Bright Ideas, and Life of Great Ideas. I did have to order from Amazon but used prices were good.
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