June Reading Thread

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Taking it easy for a while, I read Bye, Bye, Baby by Ace Atkins. It is the continuation of Robert Parker's Spenser series, authorized by the Parker estate. Atkins does the humor and asides that typify Spenser to a high level. In fact he tries to out-Parker Parker by the frequency with which Spenser, Hawk and a few others cover the page with one liners. That was a little overdone.
Of note is that Atkins tries to be aggressively contemporary. Spenser makes the points that he no longer has a landline, doesn't research newspaper microfilm and has added a few physical skills that go beyond mere pugilism. Of real note is that the plot is, as they say, ripped from the headlines. Death threats to a progressive Boston representative whose profile and even name resembles Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez. The threateners are a clone of the Proud Boys. It is interesting to note the aggressive use of yesterday's newspaper stories.
My overall grade would be a B. However that's about where I would put all of the Spensers. Amusing and relaxing. Certainly not taxing.
Atkins says that this will be his last Spenser (after ten)
 
Started The Swerve by Stephen Greenblatt - a history book. It will probably be the last book of June for me.
 
My descriptions of the books I'm reading are growing so long, I've decided to start posting some of them in the review forum.

I've just finished reading The Path of Thorns, by A. G. Slatter. (An alternate pen name for multi-award winning fantasy author Angela Slatter. Hardly an impenetrable disguise, just using her initials instead of her first name.)

Review —The Path of Thorns, by A. G. Slatter

It’s not our history and it's not our world, and the worldbuilding is such that it’s hard to pin down an analogous period for the setting—say late(ish) 19th century? It’s a world of witches, werewolves, ghosts, and vampires (we never actually meet any vampires, but it's established that they...
www.sffchronicles.com www.sffchronicles.com

For non-fiction, I am reading the intriguingly titled Casanova's Guide to Medicine. Based on the memoirs of Giacamo Casanova, best known for his many love affairs (though apparently no more amorous than other men of his era, we know about his affairs because he wrote about them), he was a polymath with a particular interest in science and medicine. In a long and adventurous life, he often had reason to seek the services of physicians, surgeons, and apothecaries, which he apparently described in rather more detail than his sexual adventures.

I, too, have a particular interest in 18th century medicine, or rather the characters in some of my novels do (Francis Skelbrooke in GM and HN once studied to become a doctor, and portions of TQN take place in a madhouse), so I needs must as well. I've just started reading it, but I look forward to what it has to say on the subject.
 
Elentarri said:
Started The Swerve by Stephen Greenblatt - a history book. It will probably be the last book of June for me.
Click to expand...
The story of how Lucretius's poem On the Nature of Things "would cause the world to swerve in a new direction" is nothing of the sort. This is actually a speculative biography of Poggio Bracciolini placed in a poor caricature of what Greenblatt thinks the Renaissance was like. Greenblatt is not a historian, is incredibly biased and has it out for the Catholic Church. He also fails spectacularly to validate his thesis/hypothesis. It's all speculation. No decent amount of evidence.
 
Walkaway by Cory Doctorow, a look at a post scarcity world where bored city dwellers venture out into the scary badlands.
 
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