#FridayReads #Booksky 💙📚🪐 📚⚡ Today's reads. I'm in the second of the first space opera by the prolific, eclectic and always excellent Claire North, an approach mixing the very modern and SF tradition, and starting on the medical thriller Geneva by British actor (and now novelist) Richard Armitage.

32nd book read in 2026. 💙📚⏳ 💙📚⚡ Pitt investigates a Ripper-style murder in the midst of the palace. Not Perry's most plausible intrigue, but her fine portrayal of life inside Buckingham and a whole novel with Gracie Phipps in a central role is a great deal for a little suspension of disbelief.

31st book read in 2026. Going back to the classics for a reread. From the omnibus French edition, the first novel Pietr Le Letton, introducing Commissaire Jules Maigret. Simenon has come to define old fashioned French crime fiction but it still surprises today by its modernity. 📚💙⚡

Good morning Womble. I've decided to pick my omnibus to reread some classic Simenon (Maigret) for the first time in many years, starting at the beginning with Pietr Le Letton. I'm also finishing the excellent Slow Gods, and still slowly progressing in Short's biography of Putin. Have a nice week!

30th book read in 2026. This is an excellent historical thriller. Nominally it's crime fiction, but it's crimes in the midst of political intrigue in the fascinating Paris of the early Revolution (1791) with capital H History (and the historical figures) never far. Award winner, deservedly. 📚💙⏳

April reads wrap-up.. Quality over quantity this month. Gagnon's Jack (Canadian historical crime fiction, first of a series) was a nice discovery, and both the Skelton and the Reynolds were really great. #Booksky

#FridayReads #Booksky 📚💙🪐 About halfway into the latest Reynolds, which is really fun. It starts as a traditional and even retro-feeling Noir with touches of humour, something someone like Stuart Kaminsky (or the Nick Harkaway of Titanium Noir) could have written, except on a generation ship

It's time to set the record straight. #TheVampireLestat debuts June 7 on AMC and AMC+. youtu.be/7c7JFMTBeVk

24th book read in 2026, 1st finished in April. (1/🧵) A comprehensive, very detailed history of the NATO alliance from 1949 to late 2023. An essential read to understand an institution that has shaped and reshaped our world since the aftermath of WWII, now imperilled like never before. 📚💙 #NATO

March 2026 reads wrap-up. Some really enjoyable ones in there, but I might be neglecting science-fiction way too much lately. I could just be more in the mood to read about familiar gone ages that made sense than to look speculatively beyond the current insane chaos, I guess. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯ #Booksky

#Fridayreads #AmReading #Booksky Currently reading. An end of the month leaning heavily toward British historical crime fiction.

#Fridayreads I'll finish today Mrs Spy. It's not exactly comedic but it stills bring a smile often enough. A fun rather light old fashioned thriller if one's in the mood for a no nonsense 1965 widowed British mom and entry-level MI-5 employee accidentally turning herself into the next James Bond 📚💙

NATO's proposed plan to help the US solve the Strait of Hormuz crisis.

The minute he started saying several weeks ago that he didn’t think NATO would even come to the US’ help and insulted NATO soldiers, it was written in the sky that he meant to set a trap for NATO allies with something unacceptable. Here it is, with threats of « very bad things » for NATO.

""We sometimes call Canada an honorary Nordic" country, said PM Støre." "When he told the [Nordic] PMs of Denmark, Sweden, Finland, and Iceland that Carney would be in Oslo, they all jumped at the chance" All this talk of getting closer to our Nordic allies is honey to most Canadians' ears

#Fridayreads #Booksky Back to Richard Sharpe for the 8th novel in a chronological read-through. It's actually his first Sharpe novel, published decades before the prequels and interstitial novels I've read so far. This was the first I had read in the 90s, in publication order, before dropping out.

New purchase. To be read in April, most likely. I stayed away from spoilers, but I've overheard this one despite being written ahead of the US 2024 election has uncanny ressemblance to events of 2025. Louise's one of the best crime fiction writers in the country. 📚💙⚡

The Devil's Road finally has an end in sight. Or, perhaps, a beginning. #TheVampireLestat debuts June 7 on AMC and AMC+.

#Fridayreads Focussing on those two today. Mrs Spy is a so far fun read (though not that much of a thriller). Nesbø is a reread of a favourite, though I regret a bit going back to my French paperback that makes Oslo feel way too... Parisian. I had switched to English for Nesbø and now remembers why😀

1st book finished in March, 15th for 2026. 📚💙 (🧵) Published and set in 1998, the start of a brilliant, complex and unique tetralogy of once paranoid spy thrillers that in 2026 feels like, well... watching the news. Best-seller in francophonie, sadly never acquired for the English-speaking market.

Latest acquisitions. I'm not technically allowed to buy new books for cause of over stocked TBR mountain, but here we are. Again. #Booksky 📚💙 Latest from Joe Hill, Michael Wood, John Connolly and M.W. Craven

Monthly recap. Some good stuff in there this month, plus JJ Pelletier's La Chair Disparue, Ben Kane's Rome and Paul McAuley's Fairyland that I'm nearly finished with. #Booksky

#Fridayreads 📚💙 Paul McAuley's 1995 "Biopunk" sci-fi thriller Fairyland Ben Kane's 2025 historical novel set in the 5th century, Rome J.J. Pelletier's 1998 politico-philosophical speculative thriller La Chair Disparue (In French. In many ways we live now in the world he saw coming from afar)

Oh yeah, he's coming. #TheVampireLestat

Hopefully this summons to answer the government will help the story get more international traction, as the behaviour of US tech companies concerns everybody. OpenAI flagged and closed the account of the BC mass shooter a year before the tragedy but failed to report her to Canadian authorities.

News: "Armed man killed at Mar-a… Canada: "Nobody cares. Hockey is on"

Oh fucking hell... the new season of BedlAm-erica has started.

#Fridayreads Now starting on this. First chapter: well, that's certainly being thrown into the pool at the deep end. We'll see where this goes. :D

Now (re)reading Boris Vian's corrosive 1951 anti-war play Le Goûter des Généraux in which the top military commanders of the west gather for a little afternoon tea party at the French general's mommy, behave like toddlers, prey on the weaker states for the sake of fun and greed and to hide their own

Forget Cabaret Voltaire and Adi Newton/Clock DVA, there’s a new industrial music wave rising in Sheffield, apparently.

Things I would never have imagined seeing one day or I would have placed them high on my  "List of things I didn’t care to know about, volume 1": what RFK Jr. and Kid Rock do when in a sauna together. The US has truly become the world’s leading source of weird shit nowadays.

Carney this morning confirmed the truth of that Politico report, saying it’s interesting it surfaces now as this has been "hiding in plain sight" for a year*. As for “spearheading it”, he said he doesn’t do it alone, citing Australia, NZ and Von der Leyen as co-leading this initiative

Carney's new Negotiator in Chief with the US, former Clerk of the Privy Council, former High Commissioner to the UK. There's the "oh so sorry" Canadian stereotype, and there's the "We give no quarter" Canadian stereotype. I'm sure Janice is a really nice woman, but she sure has that FAFO vibe.

Cool art. www.cbc.ca/news/world/g...

Good. www.theglobeandmail.com/business/eco...

It sounds a little weird at first but I actually don’t hate the idea: Northerners visiting other nordic countries to experience how they live winter instead of vacationing South. Who better than Canadians to appreciate Copenhagen or Oslo in February, and vice versa? 🤔

At this point it would be pretty damn hilarious if Canada invited a Chinese pro hockey team like the Beijing Redstar to an exhibition tournament against our NHL clubs.

As usual lately this is just stark raving mad. *Trump*, not Obama, has fully endorsed the project as “vital to US economy” back in 2017. The agreement was that Canada would pay for everything, which it did (all 6 billion $ of it). PS: China even has an Olympic hockey team.

Only in Canada. The Commission for Official Languages promotes learning the other official language with a post anglo bureaucrats *think* means « My heart and my tail are pleased when you practice the other language » but any actual French Canadian reads as « My dick and my heart get excited » 🙄😂

"It’s always fun to watch the Winter Olympics as a Canadian. It wasn’t much fun as a Brit". — Diana Fox Carney 😂 The way things are going, the "Canadians are nice" stereotype will be an endangered species before the end of 2026.

Very good Op-Ed by Stephen Marche

Symbols still matter. 🇬🇱🇨🇦🇩🇰

So, this happened when I went to my Kobo library to grab a screen capture of the cover. You won't understand why this is funny event unless you've read The Essence, which I'd warmly recommend (still on a high from the last chapter. I'm a journey before destination reader, but that one was great).

#booksky 💙📚 Current reads. Hutchinson back with a SF-Espionage hybrid in the spirit of Fractured Europe, a bit more straightforward (at the 50% mark...) but with the same fun of being thrown into the deep end of the pool and trying to keep your head above the water.

First book of February, 7th of the year (🧵/1) 💙📚⚡ A good, fast-paced thriller, second in a long going series. Thorne is shaping up as a really interesting character. It's typical of the genre in many ways, but well executed, and Billingham has so far really good ideas for unusual twisted murders.

I always thought that presence was by the FBI, which was bad enough, but ICE… Fuck that.

Canada's deputy HoS (government appointed rep of King Charles) herself Inuk from the semi-autonomous Nunavut, goes consolidate relations with some of our nordic allies and support one's sovereignty by opening a consulate in Nuuk, Kalaallit Nunaat In an age of brutality soft diplomacy still matter