This Week’s Blog Posts:
Right on track, I posted my review of the erotic, breathtaking novel that started the vampire chronicles back in 1976: Interview with the Vampire by Anne Rice. It was so good to revisit this novel that I read and loved in high school.
I’d meant to share my review of The Vampire Lestat, book two in Rice’s vampire chronicles, on Friday but I couldn’t get it in time. I started to feel like the book was immortal. Instead, I gave you The Poison Squad, a rhetorically disappointing work of journalism by Deborah Blum.
Next Week’s Blog Posts:
Definitely going to get The Vampire Lestat up on Tuesday, and the goal is to get Queen of the Damned, Rice’s third book in the vampire chronicles, up on Friday! I learned something that frightened me: Rice, to date, has thirteen novels in the chronicles. Have I fallen down another series hole? I’m not sure, but 2019 sure has been full of series.
On Thursday, I’ll share my August Reading List with you to give you an idea of what’s coming. Also, summer reading bingo at work finishes July 31st, so I won’t be reading at such a break-neck speed anymore. Whew!
Slow Books in Progress:
Book by a Male Author from my Owned TBR Pile:
I finished Robert E. Hemenway’s book Zora Neale Hurston: A Literary Biography. It was delightful to get more perspective on her life, especially since her autobiography, Dust Tracks on a Road, was largely considered a text of white lies. Hemenway was obviously on Hurston’s side, which hurt my enjoyment to some degree, but I look forward to reading her collection of letters that I own and the new work Zora and Langston by Yuval Taylor.
Book I’m Reading Aloud to My Spouse:
Something might be amiss with Uriah Heep. He’s too “umble” and nosy to earn my trust, and little Davy seems to be on the same mind track. David Copperfield by Charles Dickens proves to be funny, though one large chapter about Dr. Strong’s wife’s mother-in-law’s (so many apostrophes confirms readers shouldn’t care) problems.
Books Added to the TBR Pile:
Grab the Lapels 
Au contraire: the apostrophes make the sentence, it wouldn’t make sense without them.
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This is true, but if you’ve hit three words in a row with apostrophes, you have to wonder how connected the subject is to what readers care about! If I said my husband’s employee’s child’s baseball game, people would likely start yawning around “employee’s.” 🙂
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Wow, that cover for Ghosts of You is so striking! And I love the title, ‘Hummingbird in Underworld’.
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Ghosts of You is flash fiction that was pitched to me for review. I don’t often do this, but I’ve know the marketer for years and try to do her a solid once in a while. Hummingbird in Underworld sounds frightfully familiar after my own experiences teaching in a correctional facility.
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Oh, I hope you like The Calculating Stars when you get there! The sequel, The Fated Sky, was one of my favourite books last year.
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I just discovered this author because she wrote a long thread on Twitter about how people say we can’t get women into space because we don’t have the appropriate method for them to pee. She breaks it down and talks about how we have never had a good method for using the bathroom in space for men either, and gives loads of evidence. I was like, “Heck yes, I’ll try this person’s books!”
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I’m a bit behind with reading my blog feed so haven’t seen your reaction to the Poison Squad yet.
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I felt it dragged because it was repetitive and needed to be less biased.
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I’m not familiar with any of the books on your TBR but that sure is a nice looking collection of covers!
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BlacKKKlansmen was actually in theater last year. Spike Lee made the memoir into a film. I guess it’s pretty funny, but still takes on serious race issues.
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Oh, that does sound familiar.
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Looks like an interesting collection of books. I look forward to your reviews!
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Thanks so much! Are you a fan of Anne Rice? I’ve met so many people who read her books back in high school.
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I am not. I haven’t tried to read anything by her since high school though. At the time, I found her too detailed on the most mundane of things. I specifically remember an incredible amount of time describing the grain of wood in a table. I’m more accepting of such detail now but I just haven’t felt the draw to try her works again.
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Ha! Yes, that is after Louis becomes a vampire and everything looks AH-mazing with his “vampire eyes.”
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I still haven’t read Dust Tracks on the Road by Hurston but maybe I might read it next then the biography you read recently. Hurston seems like such an interesting woman.
You may or may not be on to something with Uriah. Dickens naming of characters is always interesting, I read somewhere about how the names may hint at the personality.
Did you get bingo multiple times with all the books you’ve read this month?
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Dust Tracks on a Road is a great book — highly entertaining. But that’s what people caution; it may be more entertainment than truth because she still had a relationship with a white patron whom Hurston did not want to anger. I’m okay with her autobiography being somewhat fictionalized as she is such an entertaining writer that I’ll read anything she writes.
We’re in this weird place in the book where David grew up super fast. Dickens races over his teen years. We’re not at the part where he is about to leave to visit Peggoty, which Aunt Betsey hopes will help him discern his vocation (though I’m not sure why).
I got SO MANY bingos, Shell! I am two books away from filling out every square, and I want to do it so badly! I’m not going to finish, though. The last day is Wednesday.
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After reading Zora and Langston, I feel like I can understand what might have compelled Hurston to entertain readers in Dust Tracks. I probably should read that soon since a lot about Zora and Langston are fresh in my mind.
Great job for getting SO MANY bingos! That’s great, I only may have stopped after one depending on what I was already reading
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Thanks to your mention of Zora and Langston, I added the book to my list. It sounds like such a wacky feud that destroyed an amazing friendship. I wonder, if she had remained friends with Hughes, would she have stayed in the public eye? She said some pretty controversial stuff, that I must confess that looking at what she said with a wider lens, I can see why she felt as she did.
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