Right now I am reading High Risk, written by a maternal-fetal medicine specialist. Do you want to read about totally different varieties of looming catastrophe? This is just the book for you! I am finding it engaging and well-written enough to persist when one might think some non-catastrophic reading material would be more appealing.
Earlier this month I finished Oona Out of Order and This Won't End Well. Oona has a really interesting premise, executed competently. What if you didn't live the years of your life in sequence? What would that be like? This Won't End Well is fluffy but pleasantly so. I also finished Forgiving God, which I really liked. Hilary Yancey's first child was diagnosed prenatally with significant congenital anomalies, and she writes beautifully about the things she has learned about disability.
I had this grand idea that I was going to finish the Palliser Chronicles in time for my fiftieth birthday in July, one per month for six months. The first one went really well. I was super-disciplined about reading my three chapters every day, and I remembered why I had enjoyed the Barsetshire Chronicles so much. But then I finished the first one and thought, "Huh, do I want to spend the next six months reading nothing but Trollope? Perhaps not." I am very fond of Trollope. He is like the insightful uncle who keeps nudging you at the family get-together to murmur insightful and witty comments about your relatives in your ear. I have been trying to read Phineas Finn (the second Palliser book) this month, but there are an awful lot of opportunities for my brain to say "oooh! shiny!" just now. Phineas Finn will doubtless be skillfully drawn and gently funny once I am fifty chapters in. Fifty chapters feels like a lot of chapters right now.
Stella and I are inching our way through Two Towers. We've said farewell to the crew on the west side of Anduin, and we just encountered Gollum. I suppose it's a good time to be reading a book about an ultimately successful war against a seemingly implacable enemy.
If you like the idea of a deep dive into a different world, I can also recommend Against Walls. Rachel-who-needs-a-blog suggested it to me -- hm, maybe a couple of years ago now. It sat on my Kindle for a long time, but I finished it up earlier this year. These days I don't read a lot of fiction that requires me to pay close attention, and so it took me a couple of tries to get through this one. Well worth the effort.
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