What the Wenches Are Reading

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Click through to see what we're reading this week! 




Angela:  This week I finished the amazing Midnight Tides (The Malazan Book of the Fallen #5) by Steven Erikson. This series continues to be a delight to me. So intricate and intense. These are large books that take a long time to read, but the payoff is definitely worth it. Tehol and Bugg became my new favourite comedic duo in the series. I also read the excellent Vermilion Drift (Cork O’Connor #10) by William Kent Krueger. I was a bit worried with how this book would go, given how Heaven’s Keep ended. However, I shouldn’t have been concerned. Krueger delivered, yet another stellar book to the series. 

 Anne: I’m still making my way through the Cut & Run series, I’m up to the emotional rollercoaster that is Touch & Geaux. I’ve just got to power through it. I’m also still listening to It. I’ve got about 11 hours to go.  

 Barb: I'm reading Grant, the new biography from Ron Chernow, the author whose book who inspired the Hamilton musical. It is absolutely riveting and I've learned so much already about this important figure who has been obscured by the pervasiveness of the Lost Cause myth. At nearly 1,000 pages I'm sure I'll be at this for a while, but I'm looking forward to every single page. 
  
Donna: With all the brouhaha that goes along with a family wedding, I found little time to read this week. It was lovely spending time with some folks I haven’t seen in many years including the pastor, who I used to babysit when I was a teenager! Life’s funny sometimes. I’m looking forward to return to Westeros soon.

 Kathi: I finished Authority and started Acceptance (Southern Reach #2 and #3). What a fascinating series! Not only is it spectacularly creative, it’s also spectacularly visual — the mental imagery strains my ability to wrap my brain around it. The author lives in my northern Florida hometown, and some of the scenery and culture seems quite familiar, but not exact…much like the folks who enter into the mysterious Area X and live to come back again. The movie based on book #1, Annihilation, is being filmed in England, and I’m not sure I feel so great about that. The Spanish moss hanging from the trees in the Southern coastal wetlands — not to mention the gators — lends an air of creepiness that can’t be found in England, last I heard. 

Merit: I’m reading the second book in The Broken Earth trilogy (N.K. Jemisin), The Obelisk Gate. The story picks up right where the first book, The Fifth Season, ends then enlightens us some more about  that complex world and its inhabitants. Jemisin doesn’t shy away from difficult subjects like tyranny, cruelty and prejudice, which feel like blows to the head and heart. The author dedication before the first chapter, “To those who have no choice but to prepare their children for the battlefield”, is so apt and moving. 

 Shau: I went back to re-reading because I just haven’t got the time to be taken in by a new story. Following Barb’s example, I’ve started the Night Huntress Series again. Hopefully I’ll have time to start something new these days. 

 Zee: Went to my fave bookstore in town and obviously ended up picking up a few books. Nobody Knows My Name by James Baldwin is now next on my reading list.

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