“A Discovery of Witches” by Deborah Harkness

This book was decent, but I read reviews for the remaining books in the trilogy, and I won’t bother reading them. People who disliked the book objected to the same things I did.... much too much unnecessary description, such as several pages detailing how Diana got dressed for her vampire date. The POV treatment is also very odd, shifting back and forth between 3rd person and first person. I did find the references to alchemy and alchemical drawings interesting. There definitely are some interesting ideas in the book but the writing style leaves much to be desired.

“Hide and Seek” by Ian Rankin

This was a decently entertaining Rebus book. Oddly though, I don’t yet feel close to Rebus. At this stage , he’s just a mishmash of other detectives I’ve encountered. Hopefully, this will change as I read more Rebus books. This mystery itself, an illegal fight club, was quite good.

“Wilderness Tips” by Margaret Atwood

I found this set of short stories to be too gloomy and bleak to be enjoyable. A world of middle aged women where adultery is commonplace doesn’t appeal to me in the least. Also, I found the occurrence of summer camps and people who wrote for a living to be rather repetitive. I suppose that intellectually, Atwood is an interesting writer, but I don’t think her characters are all that appealing