EPBOT Readers discussion

Hi Everyone!

Sorry I missed last week, life's been full of upheaval with our big addition finishing up.

I still don't have much to report though, it's been busy and I'm reading a monster book right now.


I finished:

Eleanor Oliphant Is Completely Fine - Ended up really loving this! Counted for my reading woman book about a woman with a mental illness. Elanor ended up really growing on me.

Sunstone Vol. 6 - just as a break, I really love this series.

Middlegame - Loved this so much. Counted as my ATY book by an author with multiple books on my TBR list. Reminded me of The Magicians but minus a lot of the gross stuff, and a less annoying main character.

De Profundis - Read Harder book written in prison. It was pretty short, beautifully written, but still kind of hard to get through since there's not really a narrative. Felt more like free writing he did just to get his thoughts out.

The Adventure Zone: Murder on the Rockport Limited! - my husband's super into this podcast, I don't really like it. But he wants me to share it with him, so he gets me to read the graphic novels. The first one was just ok, but I did enjoy this one quite a bit.

Batman, Volume 1: The Court of Owls - just to get it off my ipad, taking up space.

Also been reading single issues of various comics getting caught up.

I DNFed Conversations With Myself, it was supposed to be my book written in prison. But it felt like the kind of thing you can't really appreciate without being extremely familiar with everything about Nelson Mandela already. Also it's a bunch of fragments from his auto biography, journal entries, bits of interviews and stuff, so there's no real cohesive narrative or story or information. It's more supplemental if you already know his life's story and just want to have a further grasp of what he was like as a person.

Currently Reading:

Fall, or Dodge in Hell - this is my monster book, almost 900 pages. I'm about halfway through and i've been reading nearly a week. I like it, but it's slower going than some of his other works for me. I love Stephanson but he does like to wallow in the details.


QOTW:

I admit i'm tapped out for questions at the moment, not feeling Popsugar's this week for sparking discussions. So how about: How's everyone's summers (or winters if anyone in the southern hemisphere is still here) going? Any fun things that you've done, or still plan to do?

This summer's been devoted to trying to get the house done. We did get to Portland, and I;ve gotten to Cedar Point a few times. In fact, I'm going to Cedar Point on Sunday. Was hoping the house would have been done earlier, but what can you do? Hopefully it'll wrap up next week or so and we can go back to not having people in the house constantly.

I hope things calm down for you soon, Sheri!

What have I been up to since the last check-in?

I finished Fog Season by Patrice Sarath, which I liked, but it also ended on... well, it was not quite a cliffhanger, because no one was left in immediate danger, but one of the characters just made a bad decision because she didn't have all the information the reader does, and now I'm anxious for the not yet written book 3.

I also finished The Merciful Crow by Margaret Owen. At first, I wasn't sure I was going to rate it as high I wound up rating it, because the world-building is dense and complex and takes a little bit to settle in. I can see why some readers may bounce off of it. I felt like it rewarded my perseverance. And the title of book 2 makes me nervous.

T. Kingfisher (Ursula Vernon) is quickly becoming one of my favorite fantasy writers. Her latest novella, Minor Mage, was a lot of fun. The main character is a young wizard who knows three spells, but that's more magic than anyone else in his village, so he becomes the village mage by default and has to go on a quest to save the villagers. And he has a talking armadillo familiar. Apparently, she wanted to market it as a children's story, but got some push-back from her editor. I can kind of see why, as it's grim and dark and scary at points, with implications of terrible things that happened off-screen, but it also shows the main character being resourceful and finding confidence. I loved it, and I could totally see a mature fantasy-loving kid enjoying it, too.

Then I read Unsung Heroine, a novella in Sarah Kuhn's Heroine series. I would almost classify this series as paranormal romance/adventure. Like the other books in the series, it's both a romance and a superhero story, and in this case the romance is a very sweet f/f romance. I really enjoyed it.

I read some manga as well. Fruits Basket Collector's Edition, Vol. 9 and Fruits Basket Collector's Edition, Vol. 10. Two more volumes to go! I'm finally going to finish reading this manga before the new anime series gets to the end!

I am currently reading Wicked Saints by Emily A. Duncan. I can see why people have been comparing this one to Leigh Bardugo's "Grishaverse", especially her first trilogy. There's even what I think was a nod to Bardugo: a reference to a sun goddess named Alena.

That said, I feel like Duncan has a better handle on the Slavic and Eastern European cultural influences she's drawing from, and she seems to be using more Polish and maybe Ukrainian than Russian. (Bardugo got better, but there were a couple of points in that first trilogy that I cringed at some of the Russian mishaps she made. And I am not even fluent in Russian, just studied it in school and have been brushing up in Duolingo recently.)

QOTW: Summer's been pretty dull so far for me, actually. We're having our vacation in September, driving down and renting a house in Oregon for a week away from home. I'm not really a beach person, but I enjoy the views of the beach. And we're going to do stuff like go to Tillamook for yummy grilled cheese and ice cream. It's basically a go relax and eat tasty stuff vacation. And my partner and I will probably plan for NaNoWriMo in November while we're there.

Aside from that, we've been making plans for next year's trip, which will be in August 2020 to Star Wars Celebration in Anaheim, and then probably a few days at Disneyland to enjoy Galaxy's Edge, since we'll be there anyway.

Sounds like I'm not the only one who's had a busy last few weeks! New in my reading world this week...

Finished Year Zero. I didn't expect to enjoy this as much as I did, since I'm not really a music geek. I am however, well versed in copyright law, and that made it delightfully nerdy, just on a somewhat different level. It was a bit heavy on the random/absurd, especially at the end, but it turned out to be a fun palate cleanser after tons of heavy reading over the past few months. It's a ridiculous concept for a story, but the author wins major points for making it the whole thing work surprisingly logically!

Most of last week was European Travel for the Monstrous Gentlewoman, which I was not expecting to be almost 800 pages when I put it on hold with the library. It's the sequel to The Strange Case of the Alchemist's Daughter, this time sending our heroines to Europe in search of vampires. Just as much fun as the first book of what is evidently a trilogy, and I'm eagerly anticipating the third coming out later this fall.

Currently working on Terminal Alliance which I'd been really looking forward to after so many recommendations over on the Mothership. Unfortunately it's just not clicking with me the way that I'd hoped. I love the concept, but there has just not been any character development to help me get into it. Also frustrating is the use of the "characters are named after significant past Earth figures" trope, in which, as usual, Earth's past evidently ends right about the time the book was written. So with the exception of main-character Mops, there has evidently been no one historically notable on Earth in the 250 years between our present day and when the book takes place. And in trying to keep things relevant, Beyonce is placed in this canon alongside Mozart and Marie Curie. I've never seen this trope executed well, and it tends to kill the suspension of disbelief for me in any book where it's used.

It's been a quiet summer as Hubs and I hunker down and try to save money for our big Florida trip in December, as well my likely job change in February. We've been busy clearing out a family member's estate, and that's taken up tons of time. State Fair season started for us this past week, with exhibit submissions. We're judges for the beverages division, so that took up all this past weekend and will continue into next week. By the time the fair ends, it will be September and Alaska will already be fully in fall mode (we've already go leaves starting to change). Then it's time to get things ready because (in my Stark-est voice) "winter is coming."

This week I read King of Scars, which is the newest book in the Grishaverse. I really liked it, but I had read the first trilogy about three years ago, and wished I had done a reread because there were many returning characters and I only half remembered their previous activities.
I am almost done with Reticence by Gail Carriger, which is the fourth book in her third series set in the Parasolverse. It is delightful.
I had the bookworm's dilemma of having about 12 requests at the library, most with lots of people, and then having to pick up 8 books in 4 days. I am going to do my best to get through them all, as most I can't renew because of others waiting.
Sarah, thanks for the warning about the 800 page European Travel book...
We are sticking close to home this summer, as everybody in our family had some travel adventures in January and March (although not all together). We had a flurry of home cleaning and painting instead. For some reason a slow pace of reading for me the past few months. Hoping to catch up with my big pile of TBR this month.