Stopped about 1/4 through THE WITCHES

I will come back to it.  Sometimes it is quite readable and a few pages fly by, but then it becomes prodigious with unnecessarily large words and odd phrasing.  There are times I read sentences two and three times to try to understand them--sometimes I gave up.  At this point, less than twenty people have been accused (one a five year old girl) and no one has been executed, but, I've seen that jail.  I don't know how anyone could live in it long.

I have now begun Demelza by Winston Graham, the second book in the Poldark series.  However, after seeing Sunday's episode on PBS, I'm disgusted with the story and am considering quitting!  I'll see how this goes...

Finished Dick Van Dyke's Autobiography

The character we saw on the screen (large and small) is the same person who wrote this book--warm, funny, caring, gentle, family man.  A very fun read with lots of information about the shows as well as the family.  A joy to read.

I have just started The Witches:  Suspicion, Betrayal, and Hysteria in 1692 Salem by Stacy Schiff.  I can't find it listed on Goodreads, and when I tried to add it manually, it disappeared immediately after I added it--it had taken me awhile to add, so I'm not going to try again.  Not sure I was going to find it interesting since I have gone to Salem and saw reenacted witch trials there, saw the prison the accused were kept in (being hung would have been a relief), taught The Crucible, and read a number of novels and one non-fiction piece about this already.  But this non-fiction work starts by explaining the difficulting in digging out what happened from sparse and contradictory records and I find I am already interested.  That said, I may read this in four sections just because of the smallness of the print and the fairly dryness of the material.



I went back to Goodreads today (one day after posting the above) and found it--perhaps because I had added it?

Finished DEATH BENEFIT

I had loved the character of Pia Grazdani when I first met her in the second book in her series which I had read out of order.  This is her introduction book, and I love her even more.  She reminds me of Larkin's Lisbeth Salander, if she had been a medical student.  I hope to meet her in another of Robin Cook's thrillers, which this certainly was.  One of those books that you can't put down and then, when you get to the end, you regret that it is finished!

I have now started My Lucky Life in and out of Show Business, by Dick Van Dyke.  I've been looking forward to reading this since I first heard that it was out.  I waited too long to buy it and then it was out of print.  Luckily I found it from a private vendor on Amazon.  It has started as I was hoping: funny, sincere, and charming, perfectly fitting with the public image of this man.

Made progress on BY BLOOD WE LIVE, read a children's book, and started a new Robin Cook

Rather than be the romantic, albeit dangerous, vampires I enjoy reading about, these are mostly stories about more traditional evil vampires, though there are twists.  I enjoy the stories, but there are so many of them after a while they all start to blend together in my head, so I have to take breaks from them.  I have just passed the half-way point and am taking another break.

I then read The Ox of the Wonderful Horns and Other African Folktales by Ashley Bryan, a children's picture book with five wonderfully unfamiliar (to me) stories.  I think I will enjoy sharing it with our Great-Grandkids who should move in with us by the end of the month.



I have now just barely started Death Benefit by Robin Cook.  I've read the book that came immediately after it, so am reading this one out of order.  I have only read the prologue, in which a clandestine and illegal gun deal has taken place in Russia.  Just doesn't seem much like Robin Cook yet.

Finished THE BIG SHORT

Well, it seems that the reason none of us understood "junk bonds" and all the other convoluted kinds of bonds that blew up towards the end of 2008 is that they were so complicated that no one understood them.  Which may be why nobody on Wall Street was ever actually prosecuted--none of them understood what they were doing.  They weren't criminal, they were stupid!  The few people who bet against the bonds were very interesting people--unusual, very smart, and incredulous.  Good book, though somewhat technical.

I have now returned to By Blood We Live.  These are short stories about vampires by modern authors.  I have read a story about a group of vampire hunters taking out a nest and am now reading one about a young vampire going out hunting alone for the first time.