EPBOT Readers discussion

Hi everyone!

Busy weekend trying to get a bunch of overdue yard work done and house cleaning to prepare for a holiday barbque. It was fun, but busy! As such only finished one book this week.

I finished:

How Long 'til Black Future Month? - this is popsugar book with a question in the title. It's like many short story collections. Some were good, some were just ok. Overall I thought she had a lot of really interesting ideas that I haven't seen in other Sci-fi/fantasy work.

Currently reading:

The Sweetness at the Bottom of the Pie - popsugar book with spicy, salty, bitter, or sweet in the title. Also Read Harder's cozy mystery. I'll probably finish it tonight. I like it ok. I read a later Flavia book for another challenge a few years ago. They're cute books, but I always get dubious about how tolerant police are of a civilian child mucking about in things like a murder investigation.

QOTW:

What are your limits for suspending disbelief?

Obviously if you read any fiction, you have to do it a little because fiction isn't true. I read a lot of science fiction and fantasy, so obviously that requires a lot more. However I find that I still need some sort of established framework to hold true. Especially for something like urban fantasy stuff. I'll accept the magic bits, but the real world parts need to be reasonably accurate unless the differences are built into the new world.

For example, I read a lot of vampire smut. I'll buy nano-powered vampires from Atlantis, sure. But the protagonist who makes award winning video games in his basement that have amazing graphics, writing, and gameplay? Not so much. Sure Minecraft started with one dude, but it was a clone of an existing game, the art was pretty terrible (still is, but i digress), and there was nothing resembling a plot. The big name games that have awesome plots, amazing graphics, excellent gameplay, and such generally have credit lists of hundreds of people.

Also that's one of the things I pick at Harry Potter for. Hogsmede was noted to be one of the only wizard-only villages in Great Britain or something like that. That means that MOST witches and wizards live in normal neighborhoods amongst muggles. Why would they have such problems with dressing like muggles and using their money? Do they all apparate/floo network all the way to Hogsmede or Diagon Alley just for groceries? Have to confund the electricians and water and the like to not notice their houses aren't hooked up/aren't using the services to avoid paying muggle bills? Don't they need to wear muggle clothing to blend in with them on the street on a daily basis? Don't get me wrong, I love Harry Potter, but there's a lot of things I find to pick at, haha. I suppose it's the Ravenclaw in me.

I just finished King of Scars and really enjoyed it. It was nice seeing some "old friends" and favorites from both previous series again.

I've started reading The Countess Conspiracy. I find that Courtney Milan's romances make a really great spacer, for lack of a better word, between longer books. They're fun, well-written, mostly standalone books that tie together. Her characters are always enjoyable for me. I've been looking forward to the story of these particular characters since their first appearance.

QOTW: What are your limits for suspending disbelief?

Hmm... I agree with a lot of what Sheri said, about the real world parts needing to make sense. That said, I have a lot of capacity for suspending belief in fantasy and sci-fi.

If an author sets up rules in their book, like a magic system or rules for supernatural creatures, there need to be very good, well-explained reasons for them to break their own rules.

Another thing that strains my disbelief is when a character does a complete personality turn with no good explanation. When a character doesn't react to something or act the way I would expect them to. That will throw me right out of a story if I can't figure out why they're acting the way they are or if it's not explained later.

I finished the audiobook version of Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone, which filled the Harry prompt: (re)read a HP book.

29/52 prompts for the year.

QOTW: I'm pretty generous with suspension of disbelief. I agree with Jen when it comes to characters I care a lot for or relate to: they aren't allowed to act out of character without a very good explanation!

(Otherwise but off topic, bad writing/editing yanks me out of stories more often than anything else.)

This week I read "Banker" by Dick Francis and "Ghost Times Two" by Carolyn Hart. I liked both of them but probably won't reread.

QOTW. I am pretty generous with suspending disbelief (I'm a huge fan of musicals so can accept people bursting into song spontaneously [And love the movie Enchanted for mocking this.])

I abandoned one popular series because while I could handle the time travel, I couldn't get past the heroine fighting off a wolf bare-handed.

In a somewhat related note, I've read at least two books this year written in the 1970s where the plot would fail today because of changes in modern medicine. In one, a banker was standing in his building's fountain in his suit talking about seeing people who weren't there. His colleagues brought him home to his wife (without calling ahead) rather than calling 911. In another, people kept getting bonked on the head and being knocked unconscious, but they didn't call the police or go for treatment because "nobody was seriously hurt." These things have distracted me from the story.

I'm going to shake things up and start with the question of the week, since I just snorted reading Kathy's post above because the book she abandoned is referred to as "the wolf-cape book" by myself and a friend, who were also not fans.

That particular title aside, I generally am pretty good about suspending disbelief unless the writing is just awful - that takes me out more than inaccuracies. Glaring inconsistencies and characters changing personality mid-stream with no explanation are my biggest pet peeves - as long as the world is internally consistent, I'm usually good with it.

On to my reading since the last check in - I finished Dear Evan Hansen shortly after my last post for IRL book club #1. It was surprisingly well-written for a tie-in book, and I'm looking forward to seeing the show in September so I can see where the songs fit in.

I then moved on to The Widow Clicquot: The Story of a Champagne Empire and the Woman Who Ruled It for IRL book club #2, which was quite a shift in tone. It's got the makings of a great story, but unfortunately there just isn't really enough primary record still available to make it fully come together. I greatly appreciate that the author didn't supplement with her own speculation as happens so often, and I'm still glad I read it, because the information that is there is really interesting.

Next up was Memoirs of Hadrian for IRL book club #3. It was either absolutely mind-numbingly tedious or some of the highest level trolling I've ever seen, since the female author recreates 300 pages of a self-obsessed man rambling on about himself far beyond the point that anyone could ever care. It's well written in the sense that she 100% nails the mansplaining, grandstanding, whining, etc. that you would picture in that situation, but it makes it really painful to slog through. The discussion is tomorrow night, so I'm looking forward to hearing everyone else's thoughts about the trolling possibility.

Since I left all of the book club books to the last minute in the last round, I'm getting to them ahead of time this month - I read Half Upon a Time for IRL book club #1 next. It was entertaining, and I'm definitely interested in reading the other two books in the series to see what happens next, since it's actually pretty unpredictable for a middle-grade fantasy.

I'm currently reading Hocus Pocus & The All New Sequel for IRL book club #2 - I'm still in the part that's the story of the movie, so I haven't gotten to the sequel part yet - but the movie is surprisingly enjoyable as a book so far.

Back in town after a week offgrid hanging out at a remote camp in Western Alaska. Not much time at camp to read, but yay for plane time! In the last two weeks:

Finally got my turn with Onyx and Ivory. My thoughts are mostly in the book club questions. I can't say I loved it, but YA isn't really my thing, either. In the end, I think it wound up just being very predictable, like it needed a but more subtlety and perhaps really good unexpected plot twist. It had many of the elements that make YA so popular, so I can definitely appreciate why so many other people have really enjoyed it, though.

Read Terry Goodkind's new novella The Sky People and surprisingly wasn't impressed, as I usually really love Goodkind's writing. It may have been because that this didn't feel in any way like Goodkid's wrote it- it felt repetitive, disjointed, and 100% lacking his usual complexity and finesse in telling a story; even the story concept itself was a tired cliche. My only theory is that he was trying to set a literary mood for a story following a pair of fairly primitive indigenous tribes, but it came off as feeling paternalistic instead.

Airplane and camp reading was to knock off Wheel of Time 10 Crossroads of Twilight. This one occupies an odd space in the series, picking up after a world-altering climax in book 9, and setting the stage for book 11 to really start to swing the series the series towards the finale. So not much happens in it in the scheme of things, but the stage is definitely set for something big in Knife of Dreams (which is, of course, underway).

QOTQ- I read mostly sci-fi and fantasy, so suspension of disbelief is a bit of an odd duck. Like others have said, I can buy into the big stuff in a series, as long as the bits that have to stay tethered in reality stay reasonably plausible. The fastest way to kill suspension of disbelief for me is for is for the story to feel dated/tied to its year of publication- such as "current era" slang terminology and references, or a sci-fi universe with conveniently no future "history" after the publication date showing up. Profanity in fantasy (less-so in sci-fi) drives me batty for the same reason. I almost feel like this is an element of bad writing- as an author who has created a whole world, why can't you also whip up a pivotal event in the 23rd century to refer to, future-famous figures to name things after, or a small selection of offensive "colorful metaphors" unique to your world, when they are needed, too?

Like Sarah this week I finally finished Onyx and Ivory. Like many have said, I found the ending a bit unsatisfying, fairly predictable, but overall the book was averagely enjoyable too.

I'm away on a business trip, so I packed an esoteric book that I just received because it was paperback and fairly thin and a topic I care a lot about. Applied Anatomy of Aerial Arts: An Illustrated Guide to Strength, Flexibility, Training, and Injury Prevention and honestly I am shocked that GR had a link for that and it has ratings and reviews! I am an aerialist and older so I have to be very cognizant of being strong to avoid injury. I got the book as part of competing in a lyra competition (took 3rd, of 13 in my category!!). I am finding it a bit too clinical for me. The author is a DPT but assumes the reader knows anatomy and the technical names for many things, which I do not. I'll see how it goes.

I am still listening to Alcatraz Versus the Shattered Lens. I am not in a place for audiobook listening at the moment so this one is a bit on hold until I return from my trip.

QOTW: I tend to be like most of you. I can believe in the world but the details need to be believable. Not just the physical descriptions but behavior, etc. I think that is one reason I often enjoy most Nora Roberts books is because she writes her characters to speak in today's vernacular for a story based in today and with a casual familiarity that sometimes gets lost.