In the midst of this sea and on the edge of this desert.

 What did you just finish?
Tevye the Dairyman, Sholem Aleykhem
This was my pick for my book club's old age theme. Most of the group felt it fit the theme well enough considering it goes on until Tevye's quite old. I loved the narrative chat, even though I did feel like answering back, "yes Tevye I am well aware you are not a woman! God Forbid!" I sympathised a lot with Golde! They style was just so clever and involving though and basically made me sympathetic with everyone. There were quite a lot of times when I was singing the sentences in the head because I'm far too well acquainted with the musical which mostly quoted exactly from the book. And why wouldn't you! It's all gold dust! Considering I had goldfish called Topol (i was confused!) and Golde when I was very young I'm surprised it took me so long to read the book but it was a really evocative and touching read. 

What are you currently reading?
Haha Cryptonomicon, Neal Stephenson - now and forevermore apparently. I read for 30 minutes on the tube and I am lucking if I progress by even 1%. I am loving it so much though and I'm really excited that Shaftoe and Waterhouse just met. Also, "manual override" is the best way to refer to masturbation, for sure!
Also today I realised I am much further through A Feast For Crows, GRR Martin, than I remembered. it's been hiding under my bed for a while now. But I'm 690 pages in, the end is in sight! If only I could remember what happened up till now. I'm going to google some summaries or something because the next chapter opens on someone called Alayne and I have no clue who that is. 
I've also started with Code Named Verity, Elizabeth Wein, but I have to stay I'm struggling with the chatty style for the subject matter. Or perhaps I'm just struggling with the subject matter? Torture isn't my favourite thing to read about after work. But flying is! I am torn. 

What will you read next? 
I've seen Courtney Milan's The Heiress Effect recced in a lot of places lately so I have that at the ready. Also perhaps Elizabeth Bear's Blood and Iron. 

Oh my gosh this meme cannot be resisted. (and I tried hard to, really).

What are you reading now?
I’m audiobook listening to Cotillion by Georgette Heyer. I’m fairly new to audiobooks and historically have found them quite hard to get into, the wrong reader can ruin a story for me, so I’m trying to be strategic about what I listen to. This is working really well at the moment though because I can close my eyes and listen all the way to work. I’m really enjoying the story, fairly often I’m giggling along as I listen. I’m loving all the cousins and Kitty’s earnestness and everyone’s general ineptitude. I’m rather fond of most of the characters. And all the “By gad, what a cad” talk. The bit about Kitty and Freddie hot footing around London with a guidebook that is rude about all the architecture had me in stitches and their decision not to visit the British Museum because a full third of it was dedicated to old books and another to manuscripts. It's all gold-dust really.

I’m also reading Fortress Malta by James Holland which has a nice approach of piecing together the events on Malta in WW2 from the anecdotes of islanders and military personnel. You get a bit about the person and what they were doing and then what they saw at that specific moment. I’m not too far in and it may get wearying as I go along but so far so good.

Finally I’m reading Zero at the Bone by Stacie Cassarino and being quietly blown away by her poetry. She does something so magically where she twists the poetic and the mundane together so they both mean something real. One of my favourites so far is In the Kitchen.

Except A Place of Greater Safety, Hilary Mantel, still going on that one. Could be a year or so in the making the way I keep reading everything else in the meantime. Even though it’s spectacular.

What did you just finish reading?
The Vor Game and Cetaganda by Lois McMaster Bujold. Both of these books really sold me on Miles, I had been missing Cordelia too much before these I think. I definitely preferred The Vor Game for all the devastating Aral and Miles father/son snippets but Cetaganda was also intriguing in the way it exposed so many of Miles insecurities differently to how the previous books had done. I’ve been meaning to read this series for a long time and I’m really enjoying it so far.

What are you reading next?
Thinking of returning to The Tawny Man series to read The Golden Fool by Robin Hobb for my next dose of Fitz/Fool drawn-out agony. I can’t decide whether to dive back into this series or press on with Miles and Labyrinth (I think that's next because I’ve already read Ethan of Athos). Also I keep starting Code Name Verity by Elizabeth Wein and then not getting very far so maybe that.