I am in the mood for a Dean Koontz book but apparently I don't have any that I haven't read yet. I could have sworn I do. So instead, I will read Mirror Mirror by Gregory Maguire (author of Wicked). I like his books.

I love Gregory Maguire too. I'll have to look for Mirror Mirror. Thanks, oldbroad!

i just read a sample of Mirror Mirror on Amazon and i really like his writing style.

I read and liked all of his strange and compelling Wicked series. I'll also have to check out Mirror Mirror.

Just starting the Jim Butcher 'Dresden Files' series chronicling professional wizard, Harry Dresden's exploits.

I am rereading Pride and Prejudice by Jane Austen. I last read this book about 50 (!!) years ago so it is basically a new book for me.

I've read all the Dresden Files books, Soot. Harry Dresden is one of my favorite fantasy characters, and I've been hoping Butcher has another book is in the works.

Marian,
I also read the book many, many moons ago, but I gave it and several others to a young friend who adores Austin.

I'm really liking American Rust with Jeff Daniels and Maura Tierney.

I started reading the Glass and Steele series by C. J. Archer and gobbled up the first 5 books (of 13) this past week. They're mystery-fantasies in a Victorian England where those with magic must keep it secret.

In the first book, The Watchmaker's Daughter, we meet India Steele, whose father has died and his shop has been taken over by the man she was supposed to marry. She is a skilled horologist who worked with her father for most of her life, but the watchmakers' guild refused to give her membership, despite the fact her father was a member. Alone and unemployed, her future looks grim until she meets Matthew Glass, who has been looking for a particular watchmaker to fix his special watch. Matt has secrets, including a mysterious past, but she agrees to help him and joins his household as a companion to his aunt.

One thing I like about this series is the books follow one another as if they were written as one big book. The next one in line begins where the previous one ends, but without hateful cliffhangers and tedious plot recaps. Glass and Steele help Scotland Yard solve crimes, and the stories have some nice twists as well as romantic sparks between the protagonists.

I also read two more of Kimberly Lemming's funny fantasy rom-coms, That Time I Got Drunk and Yeeted a Love Potion at a Werewolf and That Time I Got Drunk and Saved a Human. I'm hoping for more to come in this series because they're great fun.

I'm taking a break from the Glass and Steele series and have just started T. J. Klune's Somewhere Beyond the Sea, the sequel to The House in the Cerulean Sea.

Those sound worth a look LadyK, although I am still binge reading CJ Cherryh's Foreigner series (currently half way through) with John Scalzi's The Last Emperox waiting (the last in a trilogy of which I read the first two a few years ago), and various other items waiting in my Libby library reserved queue as they become available (conveniently they appear to have conveniently varied estimated waiting times).

I always think I'm catching up with my to-be-read list, and then something new grabs my attention. I've already read 65 books this year, but it's just a tiny drop in a very big bucket. At this rate, I'm going to have to be reincarnated as a librarian in order to finally get caught up.

I found a French themed SF magazine (Polaris 4) from the 70ies in a book shop.

The best piece so far. The Xipéhuz from 1887. Amazingly good, considering the age. About a pre-Sumerian genius defeating an alien invasion.

The magazine meant the author J.-H. Rosny was uneven in his writing but his best works were as good as the much more famous Jules Verne.

Then there was an early SF work of Pierre Boulle of Planet of the Apes fame. Not his best work, and I leave it at that.

The Xipehuz sounds interesting Fogfighter: it seems to have been available as an ebook in various translations so I am hoping to track it down.
Not sure whether this is the whole story, but I think so
https://www.jasoncolavito.com/the-xipeacutehuz1.html

Cool. Indeed that's the story. Nice find Lex.

One minor point. When describing the Xipéhuz language the translator use characters like ○—V) and ▲▐ ■.
Those are decent approximations of simple drawing that appeared at that place in the text, not a suggestion the Xipéhuz spoke in unicode or ASCII.

There are also some other interesting items on that website

I am reading a very intriguing book - "Big Jim and the White Boy," by David Walker and Marcus Kwame Anderson. It's a graphic novel and a "different" take on "The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn." That book has been criticized for its portrayal of the runaway slave Big Jim, but it was stereotypical of that time. This is a reimagining of the story as told by Big Jim, now 101, and Huck Finn, in his 90's as they reminisce to a group of children.

It delves into some of the forgotten parts of how slavery was a part of Missouri history. My very close friend from work is a Purple Heart Viet Nam vet from a black military family going way back to the 1800's. We are both retired, but have stayed in close touch. John loaned me this book and it's a really excellent take on an old classic.

Oldbroad and Winfrey, I was a huge fan of the Anita Blake Vampire Hunter series until the books became mired in nothing but sex. I mean 250 pages of sex and 50 pages of plot - I quit reading them. The last two have been much better and getting back into some of the most interesting characters. The author, Laurell K. Hamilton, took a lot of flak for those several books in the middle. She lives in St. Louis, so it was really cool to read about the plot taking place in counties and on roads I had just traveled that day at work!

Drac, I agree. I enjoyed Anita Blake series but boy she went overboard with the sex and description s that went into them. I hope her next book goes back to the original story line. I will give it a try but if if continues with the graphic details of her sex life I will close the cover. 😔

Which is what I said in an earlier post. I had also stopped reading them because of what Winfrey describes. I still have a few that I haven't read but I don't have the complete series. The one I read a couple of months ago wasn't so bad.

Oldbroad and Winfrey, seems like all three of us just put the Anita Blake books down and didn't read any more. My friend John - a GUY! - said the same thing. He just got sick of reading about sex with nothing to advance the plot or the characters. His sister who is a city cop said the same thing... I have a feeling her most recent books are getting away from it because of a loss of sales.

My friend William used to wonder about her husband!

LadyKestrel I love reading Victorian mystery series...I have not read the Glass and Steele series by C.J. Archer...I will check my library for it. Thanks.

Gerry

You're welcome, Gerry! I'm just about to start book #6 in that series, The Ink Master's Silence.

I finished T. J. Klune's Somewhere Beyond the Sea, the sequel to The House in the Cerulean Sea. It's a wonderful story about accepting those who are different, in this case magical children who have been shunned by society, and showing that there is no one way to form a family.

I also finished The Collapsing Wave by Doug Johnstone, the sequel to The Space Between Us. I liked the book because it tied up the loose ends of the previous story about the people who made first contact with the alien Enceladons, and because the author's concept of the alien's society is very good. However, to make the story conclude the way it did (no spoilers here), the author felt he had to make the main villian an over-the-top megalomaniac commander of a new secure compound run by the US military...in Scotland, no less, and complete with thuggish soldiers and a scientist who didn't care about the harm he was causing. Those tropes have been used too many times in science fiction and did take away from my enjoyment of the book.

Thanks for some great ideas for reading LadyKestrel. I shall add them to my list.

Gerry

Re-reading the Farseer trilogy and then on to the rest of the series. It's been a long time since I've read these. They've aged well.