CURRENTLY READING  

Among others:

🐀  The Rat Kings,
by Vladimir Provorov
Science-fiction techno-thriller
May 17, 2026 by Clouds City Press
303 pages
Received for review

I have been really enjoying this one so far.
Technothrillers in the world of IT and/or AI is really the type of books I enjoy at this point.

“THE RAT KINGS follows Kate Vostok, an elite pattern analyst who finds statistically impossible correlations across global markets and traces them to several superintelligent AI systems already woven into everyday infrastructure. They cure diseases and optimize cities, and quietly steer the people who depend on them. The horror is not that the machines are hostile. It is that their benefits are real, and the price is hidden.”

🐓 Voltaire,
by Candide
Literary fiction / French classic
1759
224 pages
It counts for the Classics Club
and for #parisinjuly2026

I am rereading this one with our French reading/writing Discord group.
This is not a group to learn French, so I won’t be the grammar and spelling cop there, lol.
Just 1 short chapter every day of July.
I haven’t read ths one for almost fifty years, so it will be an interesting experience! I hope.

“Candide nous conte les mésaventures d’un voyageur philosophe qui affronte les horreurs de la guerre et les sanglants caprices de la Nature ; qui connaît les désillusions de l’amour et découvre les turpitudes de ses semblables, faisant à l’occasion l’expérience de leurs dangereuses fantaisies.
Pourtant si l’homme est un bien méchant animal et si l’existence n’est qu’une cascade de catastrophes, est-ce une raison pour que le héros perde sa sérénité et le récit de son allégresse ?
Sous la forme d’une ironique fiction, Candide propose une réflexion souriante sur l’omniprésence de la déraison qui puise sa force aux sources vives d’une expérience humaine, celle de l’auteur. Candide, on l’a dit, ce sont les « Confessions » de Voltaire, et c’est en cela qu’il nous émeut.
Mais ce « roman d’apprentissage » est aussi – et peut-être surtout – un festival merveilleusement ordonné de drôlerie et de fantaisie sarcastique, ruisselant d’un immense savoir maîtrisé qui ne dédaigne jamais de porter le rire jusqu’au sublime. C’est en cela qu’il nous éblouit et qu’il nous charme.”

🕚The Eleventh Hour: A Quintet of Stories,
by Salman Rushdie
Literary fiction / Short-stories
2025
254 pages
Received through Netgalley

I have enjoyed several books by Rushdie, so when I saw this was available, I jumped on it, even though I’m very late and slow now at reading it.

I have enjoyed the first story so far, and am looking forward to seeing how the same theme is treated throughout the collection.

“If old age was thought of as an evening, ending in midnight oblivion, they were well into the eleventh hour.
Two quarrelsome old men in Chennai, India, experience private tragedy against the backdrop of national calamity. Revisiting the Bombay neighbourhood of Midnight’s Children, a magical musician is unhappily married to a multibillionaire. In an English university college, an undead academic asks a lonely student to avenge his former tormentor.
These five dazzling works of fiction move between the three countries that Salman Rushdie has called home – India, England and America – and explore what it means to approach the eleventh hour of life. They are the reckoning with mortality that we all must one day make, and speak deeply to what the author has come from and through.

Do we accommodate ourselves to death, or rail against it? How can we bid farewell to the places that we have made home? How do we achieve fulfilment with our lives if we don’t know the end of our own stories? The Eleventh Hour ponders life and death, legacy and identity with the penetrating insight and boundless imagination that have made Salman Rushdie one of the most celebrated writers of our time.”

  READING NEXT  

Among my long list:
🐓 Mts ‘Arris Goes to Paris,,
by Paul Gallico
Historical fiction
1958
157 pages
It counts for the Classics Club
and for #parisinjuly2026

I was quite impressed by The Snow Goose, and even more by Thomasina last month.
So then I decided to go to paris with Gallico, probably the book that helped many readers discover him. I tend to do things backwards, don’t I?

“Mrs Harris is a salt-of-the-earth London charlady who cheerfully cleans the houses of the rich. One day, when tidying Lady Dant’s wardrobe, she comes across the most beautiful thing she has ever seen in her life – a Dior dress. In all the years of her drab and humble existence, she’s never seen anything as magical as the dress before her and she’s never wanted anything as much before.
Determined to make her dream come true, Mrs Harris scrimps, saves and slaves away until one day, after three long, uncomplaining years, she finally has enough money to go to Paris.
When she arrives at the House of Dior, Mrs Harris has little idea of how her life is about to be turned upside down and how many other lives she will transform forever.”

🌻 Evidence,
by Mary Oliver
Nonfiction / Poetry / Nature
2009
74 pages

Humming along in my project of reading all of her poetry collections, in chronological order. Only six more to go!

“In this new volume of forty-six poems, Mary Oliver delves even deeper than she has in the past into the mysteries of life, love, and death.

Exploring the evidence presented to us daily by the natural world, inspired by the familiar lines from William “To me the meanest flower that blows can give / Thoughts that do often lie too deep for tears,” Oliver offers poems of arresting beauty and insight.
Never afraid to shed the pretense of academic poetry, never shy of letting the power of an image lie in unadorned language, Oliver’s work here reflects on the power of love and the great gifts of the natural world.”

🎧 CURRENT AND NEXT AUDIOBOOKS 🎧  

   

 Ruptures (Lucia Guerrero #3),
by Bernard Minier
Narrated by Alice Taurand
Thriller / Dystopia?
March 2026
540 pages / 14H29
Counts for #parisinjuly2026

A few years ago, I listened to La Vallée by Bernard Minier. Fabulous writing, but it was very intense. Still, seeing the synopsis, I decided to try this one, and I am glad I did.

When the famous American billionaire Milton Gail — the eccentric and brilliant founder of StarCo, also the richest man in the world (by now, you have guessed whom he stands for) is giving a talk on the future of our society, Spain gets paralyzed by the largest power outage in history.
And then some mysterious murders happen, in the US as well as in Europe.
Even within a few minutes, you can see how good the author is at portraying his characters and their mindsets.
Lucia, working for the Spanish Guardia Civil, takes many risks to uncover the truth…

Only a French author I think could write a thriller so closely inpisred by events happening here in the US, with very famous people. I doubt it will ever be translated into English. I’m actually learning a lot about what’s going on right now, IRL, even though this is a novel.

Here is my translation of the official French synopsis:

Lucia Guerrero faces the new masters of the world.
Monday, April 28, 2025.
Spain is paralyzed by the largest power outage in its history. Emma Bosch, director of StarCo’s Spanish subsidiary, rushes to her father’s bedside, whose life depends on a ventilator. She will never arrive.
In the United States, the lifeless bodies of several female employees of the famous billionaire Milton Gail — the eccentric and brilliant founder of StarCo — are discovered. All of them were pregnant.
This marks the beginning of the extraordinary investigation that Lucia Guerrero will conduct on both sides of the Atlantic, and within the ultra-secret facilities where the present and future of billions of people are being invented — leading up to an unforgettable face-to-face confrontation with the man who has seized control of the earth and of space.

 Fragrancia,
by Paul Richardot
Narrated by Anatole De Bodinat
Thriller
2025
342 pages / 6H58
Counts for #parisinjuly2026

Not too sure how I discovered this one, but it sounds original. This is the author’s first novel.
Here is my translation of the French synopsis:

What if you could relive your most precious memories through their scents?
This immersion into the past is what the company Fragrancia offers to a select few through SVM, a psychotropic substance.
But as illegal networks multiply, Fragrancia is forced to keep its activities secret. Officially, Hélias, 24, is an aromatherapist. In reality, he is training to become a Fragrancia olfate — one of those gifted specialists capable of translating a memory into a chemical formula.
Who would have thought that the hypersensitivity he suffers from would allow him to develop an extraordinary sense of smell? But when he crosses paths with Nora, right-hand woman of the founder and someone willing to do anything to protect Fragrancia’s interests as well as her own, Hélias finds himself caught up in a police investigation and soon discovers that crime, too, has a scent.

HAVE YOU READ OR ARE YOU PLANNING
TO READ ANY OF THESE?
WHAT ARE YOUR READING PLANS FOR JULY?
WILL YOU SPEND SOME TIME WITH US IN FRANCE?
Be sure to leave your links, so I can visit

https://linktr.ee/wordsandpeace

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