Murray > Recent Status Updates

This crime novel, set among the Navajo of Nee Mexico, deals with the ongoing tragedy of missing and murdered indigenous women.

Just starting! ✨ ✨ ✨

He carries on from Australia toward distant Cape Horn in Chile. I think it helps to know a bit about sailing to enjoy a book like this. It also helps to be an engaged reader rather than a spectator reader - that is to say, decide what you’d do next if you were him, how you might solve this or that problem - try to sail the yacht. The story becomes more interesting if you attempt this ⛵️

🐻🌲

The story takes place at Bears Ears National Monument in southeastern Utah. It has that red rock Sedona look if you look at photographic images online 🐻

🐻

Ok guys here’s how it is (I think). The murder or crime is secondary. The main plot is about Navajo customs and beliefs. That’s what most of the novel is built around. So, while you can’t expect Harry Bosch here you may not get Agatha Christie either. Sure, there is a mystery to be solved. But the Navajo Way is the thing. The thing that matters. That’s why I love this series.

It’s a mountain lion, part of Navajo mythology.

The book opens with a car bombing and the fatality that results.

Then it moves forward into the typical Hillerman labyrinth of Navajo folklore, mythology and the daily lives of those trying to track a murderer.

Audio version.

The narrator possesses impeccable multiple voice skills.

A slow but interesting start focused on Monument Valley and Navajo culture.

Audio. The reader is excellent 🪶

Carmilla, first published in 1872, is one of the first vampire novels ever written, predating Dracula by 26 years. Carmilla, with its themes of vampirism and homosexuality, shocked the standards and stereotypes for women set in the Victorian era. Today, Carmilla is considered the original archetype of female and LGBTQ vampires and Le Fanu's influence is seen throughout vampire fiction.

audio edition

I have 4 of them on deck ready to read/listen to

“An OZ fisher who set out in his crayfish boat to take fruit, champagne & beer to the English yachtsman was beaten back by 40 mph winds & waves estimated at 30 feet. After struggling through the gale for 50 miles, the bottles were smashed, the fruit was pulp and everyone aboard the 50 foot motorboat was seasick.”

It was time to “turn left”, for 7000 miles of running down the easting on the clipper way, one of the greatest sails in the world. Seven thousand miles in a straight line - there are not many places in the world where that could happen ⛵️

Grandpa would have said, “This is a grand adventure!”

And so it is 🌊☀️

Hc. First edition 1967. Paper is so thick it feels I’ve turned two or three pages at the same time instead of only one.

🌊 Spring is a fine time to go to sea 🌊

“I had no feeling of romance about the voyage yet but, of course, seasickness is very anti-romantic.”

⚓️ Call me Ishmael ⚓️

On the surface, men like these warriors and killers, would look at me with lust in their heart. But here, in the bowels of the earth, they look at me with wonder and hope, and as their savior.
~ Sonja ~

From the writing to the art, it's everything you could possibly want from Red Sonja.
- ComicBookBin.com

Frank Cho has devised a marvelous gem of a story by sending Sonja against what is arguably one of the most memorable of culturally mythic monsters.
- BrokenFrontier.com

Great art by Homs powers this tale - battle scenes crackle and the pace is brisk. Sonja fans will dig it.
- Best Shots at Newsarama.com

No need to trouble yourself with me. Just drop me off at the first farm run by vegetarians.
~ requests the wild pig ~

Life is a chamber of horrors of our own making. Our memories are but a haunted house in which you are forever pursued by the ghosts who made you what you are.

I’ve already suffered a curse far worse than dying - immortality.

War is two men hanging themselves to see who dies first.

Everyone is born missing a piece from their soul. Unable to find the missing piece, they trust the nation to fill it for them.

Nations and empires are not a cult of personality. But a symptom of humanity’s common psychosis. The need to find worth in power.

In the end, all the gods show us is ourselves.

For sometimes the only difference between living and dying is that living hurts more ⚔️

An interlude with something different. I didn’t know there were that many Red Sonja stories out there. I didn’t know they’d created a whole history for her. Let’s see how it works out ⚔️

audio version

A Confederate soldier returns from the war to discover his land and farmhouse have been taken over by men loyal to the Union. He has brought his family, who were temporarily living elsewhere, along with him. And now he and his wife are faced with a hard choice.

That first loving kiss, the one that comes out of you from the source of your personal river, and the one that comes from her that is the same, there's never another moment like it; never another flame that burns so hot. It can never be that good again, ever. All manner of goodness can come after, but it's different. And that's a good thing, because if we burned that hot for too long, we'd be nothing but ash.

Well, I was right about that. I said the way the novel was written made it come across to me like a blend of Huck Finn (due to the dialect style of the first person narration) & Cormac McCarthy. Now it’s full blown McCarthy/McMurtry. Our protagonist has joined the Buffalo 🦬 Soldiers & now it’s war with the Apache & his squad has been ambushed. The writing is fast-paced & it’s impossible to stop reading it.

So far, somehow a mix of Huck Finn (part of that is because the story is told in dialect) and bit of Cormac McCarthy. McCarthy presence is not because the story is dystopian or particularly violent, but because of its setting and pace and the mood of the piece. Good writing and came on horseback recommended by a friend. The time period is post Civil War in the American South.

Esto es excelente!

The art and plot are so good it’s like watching Netflix with subtitles.

El Zorro cabalga de nuevo! 🗡️ 🐎