EPBOT Readers discussion

Hi Everyone!

This week I finished:

Information Doesn't Want to Be Free: Laws for the Internet Age - This is for Read Harder's nonfiction book about technology. I wish i'd used this for my career advice prompt, it is much better and more relevant than the one I read! I enjoyed it a lot more than expected. Perhaps because Doctrow is a fiction writer and a blogger, so tone-wise it just read better. I'd recommend it to anyone, really. It deals with a lot of sticky areas in terms of digital copyrights and how they are often only protecting the middle men, not the consumers OR the creators. It gets increasingly important as more and more of our technology is computer based.

Silence Fallen this was just for fun. I love Mercy Thompson and this was a good one. I enjoyed the shifting perspectives.

Currently reading:
The Beauty Myth Ugh. I started reading this and then ended up having to put it down and read silence fallen just to get a breath of fresh air. Trying to finish this before tomorrow so I can take it back without renewing. It's for Emma Watson's feminist book club. It was written in the early 90s, and it is pretty outdated. I'm not saying there's nothing valid in it, a lot of the concerns are absolutely still real. However a lot of the situation is changed due to the internet, and people's perspectives of feminism. There's pretty much zero intersection in her views of women's rights. There's a lot of other stuff I have a problem with too, but I don't want to get ranty, or start political discussions. Anyhow, i'm planning on just plowing through as fast as I can and moving on to something pleasant.

How's everyone else doing? Reading anything great?

Hi everyone, my first comment. I'm not following any reading challenges at the moment, just picking up whatever takes my fancy.
I have just finished reading Company of Liars by Karen Maitland. I did actually quite enjoy it but it was a lot darker than I expected. Not that I should really have been surprised since it is set in plague times and I have read one of her other novels (The Raven's Head).
Currently reading The Paper Magician by Charlie N Holmberg. It was free on kindle and I've been on a few long train journeys this week so I thought I'd give it a try. I love the ideas behind the book and the novel magic system but I'm not a big fan of the writing. The commentary from the main character is a little grating at times. Despite that I am nearly finished it and am possibly invested enough to read the others in the series. I will say it is the first book I've read to compare someone's hair to uncooked yams.

Hi Catherine, welcome to the group! It's totally cool to just chat about what you're reading here, challenge or not :)

I read The Paper Magician a while back, I think i also got it free or else really cheap. I liked it pretty well, but I never continued on the series. I read reviews that said it got very love-story focused, and that the main girl got annoying. I have no idea how valid that is, but I wasn't in the mood for it at the time so never picked them back up. If you do read more, let me know if they turn out ok!

Hello everyone! Glad to hear your reviews on The Paper Magician - that book is on my TBR list, though it's pretty far down there.

In the last few weeks I've finished:
Artemis Fowl for a bestselling YA book. It was a fast read and I enjoyed it more than I thought I would. Next time I need a fun distraction I'll consider reading another one in the series.

The Diary of Ellen Rimbauer: My Life at Rose Red as a book with a color in the title. (OK, OK - the color is in the subtitle, but I'm counting it :-) ). This was the only book on my shelves with a color in the title that I haven't read yet. The "Dear Diary" letter style worked well - it was a fun change-up in writing style from what I've otherwise been reading lately. For being written by a man, I was skeptical that he could effectively write as a woman talking to her diary, but I think he did pretty well. One thing that did bother me was that the author put too much background detail in some of the entries, which made it feel more like a novel and less like a diary. Now to watch the movie Rose Red again.

Currently reading:
Fahrenheit 451 as my classic from the 20th century. I'm about half way through and going to reserve judgement until I finish. It's surprising to me how relevant it seems - it doesn't seem like a far jump from our current reality to one like the book.

I'm also reading Frankenstein as a book that's more than 100 years older than me. Before starting it I was sure I'd read it before. A few pages in I realized I have not. I'm reading this one on my phone as a time filler when I'm waiting in lines, over lunch, etc. so I expect it will take me a bit to complete.

After these, I only have 11 left in my challenge! Then I get to re-read Harry Potter!

Hi Sara, which challenge are you reading for? Is it a previous popsugar? I feel like i remember the color prompt from 2015.

I felt the same for Farenheit 451, also for Handmaiden's Tale. Kind of distressing!

Sheri wrote: "Hi Sara, which challenge are you reading for? Is it a previous popsugar? I feel like i remember the color prompt from 2015.

I felt the same for Farenheit 451, also for Handmaiden's Tale. Kind of ..."
Hi Sheri, Yes - it's the 2016 PopSugar challenge supplemented with 12 prompts from a random book blogger. I started the challenge last year and made it about half way through, so trying to finish it this year.

Hi everyone! So nice to see so much conversation going on in the board this week! And so many great books, too. I'm looking forward to hearing more thoughts about Frankenstein as that book is finished up. I think it's such a brilliant novel and way ahead of its time.

I'm still travelling, so reading at a slower pace. We're pretty active vacationers, so and most of my reading is happening either on trains, planes, or ferries in between destinations or a chapter before I pass out at night. But we're home tomorrow, so I should start getting back on a regularly reading schedule!

I'm halfway through both of the books I brought with me, so I guess that means I finished one book this week? Anyway, they're the same books as last week: the Killer Angels and The Year of the Flood. I'm enjoying them both, but they are very, very different books. Sheri, I noticed last week that you were thinking about trying out the sequel to Oryx and Crake, and I would definitely encourage you to give it a try. There is some grittiness in this book – it wouldn't be Margaret Atwood if it didn't have some! – But it's largely in the beginning and after that it focusses more on the lives of the two female characters. (and I think I forgot to mention last week that this is my book about an interesting woman. It's actually two women.... I'm interpreting this one pretty loosely in that I find the main characters interesting and they're women, ha ha.) Halfway through the book, I'm beginning to see more places where it intersects with the first book in the series and it's really skilfully done. I'm enjoying it immensely. It's making me want to dive right into the last book in the series as soon as I'm done this one.

The killer Angels is quite a strange book. I saw that a lot of Americans used to have to read it in their high school English classes so I'd be interested if anyone else in here has read it. It's told from the multiple points of perspectives of men commanding on the field of battle at Gettysburg, but also touches on their own philosophical, moral, and political reasons for believing that the war was necessary. I suspect that when it was published in the 70s it was a more nuanced presentation of the rationale behind the Civil War, but at times I find it a bit too overt in it's attempt to do this. Still, I'm very much enjoining it, even if I'm having a hard time keeping all of the narrative voices straight!

Stephanie,

We travel like that too! Always doing stuff. Not much of a "sit at the beach" sort of couple.

I'll check out the rest of the series, I just need to get this stupid book finished and back to the library, and then knock off the other digital book that just came up. And then probably read a few light books just to give myself a break. Then I'll look into them. :)

I haven't read Killer Angels, hadn't even heard of it. Not sure it'd be my thing, I'm dubious about war books in general. If I must read them, not sure I want to hear a bunch of justifying accounts of why it was a good thing.

I "finished" The Lost Art of Finding Our Way and returned it to the library. It was only okay. It had been mentioned on a group on the internet (not FoE) and caught my eye because I consider navigation one of my superpowers. I basically stopped halfway through. The author is a physics professor at Harvard and its writing style almost approached textbook. The second half of the book is exclusively about navigation on water, (like hull shapes, reading waves, tides, currents, etc) which is of no interest to me at all. So I declared it done.

I'm traveling for work next week and I'll bring Come Sundown because I need a mindless novel after two involved non-fictions and I'm usually a fan of Nora Roberts. She's very formulaic but it suits for now. I've been so-so on her latest novels the past few years though so we'll see how this one goes. I prefer her trilogies.

Susan, mindless reading is great after some heavy reads! I've thrown in a few "vampire smut" (nods to Sheri for the terminology) novels and two of the Hudson Valley Series books by Alice Clayton (I recommend the fist one, "Nuts") during my reading challenge after some of the heavier and more complex novels (I'm looking at you, Independent People and Lonely Hearts Hotel). I find it keeps me going when I'd otherwise want a reading break.

Sheri--I was doing some more reading on Gettysburg and The Killer Angels this morning (because it's turning out to be one of those novels that haunts you afterward...), and I read that Joss Whedon has been quoted as saying the novel partly inspired the opening scene of Firefly. I can totally see it, too, although I'm not sure it's enough of a connection to entice readers. It did have me almost crying on the plane as I read about the futility of the final charge in the penultimate chapter! Also, just to clarify my comment earlier, the novel doesn't try to justify the battle/war, so much as it presents multiple perspectives of why people believed in their various causes, and sometimes even showed how they lost their belief or were just naive in he first place. Turns out this book was another Pulitzer Prize winner--I was skeptical of why that might be when I was halfway through, but (spoiler for next week!) I finished it on the plane yesterday, and now I can totally see it. Now, off to do laundry and finish The Year of the Flood!