Reading Envy Readers discussion

You can listen to episode 188 for the official challenge but the basic theme is series completion. Over on the episode 188 discussion thread, Carol and Nadine have already started sharing what they want to do, and this has included other interpretations like multiple non-series books by a single author or starting (and hopefully finishing) a series.

I will link to my blog post about the series I hope to finish, once I've written it. But now is the time! Finish that series you always meant to finish! You can do it!

(Please use #readingenvysummerreading in social media as you post it around!)

Here is my blog post about it after perusing my shelves and TBR.... but I already want to add to that list to consider books 2, 3, and 4 after This Earth of Mankind since it's currently Asian and Pacific Island Heritage month and those books are from Indonesia! I'm not sure I remember enough of the first though, and donated it before finding books 2-4 in such good shape.

I finally started a book from this challenge! Countdown City by Ben H. Winters looks to be a quick read. I don't know that a good white cop at the end of the world is really the read we need for right now, however. I'm trying not to be too skeptical about it.

I finished last week for my reading group and realised it was the final part of The Rotters Club series ( its a while since I read the first two) and aswith good satire a bitter sweet story of England between 2010 and 2018 and how we came to be an intolerant and unforgiving country. Anyway it seems like a good start to this challenge.
I plan to hopefully finish the last of the Edward St Aubyn Patrick Melrose series within this thread ( a good excuse to finish anyway) and maybe also the long neglected but enjoyed Cornish trilogy by Robertson Davies ( watch this space).
Last years Summer challenge allowed me to read some books left neglected in a large TBR pile son hopefully I can shift a few more.

Andrew wrote: "I finished last week for my reading group and realised it was the final part of The Rotters Club series ( its a while since I read the first two) and aswith good..."

HUZZAH!

I am currently 2/3 into Mountolive by Lawrence Durrell and I'm hoping to complete the quartet this summer... I must be honest that this particular volume is not super thrilling.

I’m about to start reading , the fourth and last (so far) book in the Health of Strangers series. It’s part near-future sf part police procedural set in Edinburgh during a long-lived epidemic, and is about a team whose job is to find people who haven’t turned up for their mandatory monthly testing.

I read the first book a couple of years ago, and restarted the series in April. Disclaimer: the author is a friend of my brother’s which is why I read the first book, but I wouldn’t have continued with the series if I hadn’t enjoyed the first one.

Isabel (kittiwake) wrote: "I’m about to start reading , the fourth and last (so far) book in the Health of Strangers series. It’s part near-future sf part police procedural set..."

This sounds like an interesting concept and I haven't heard of this series before. Is it weird to read about an epidemic and monthly testing considering where we are?

One of the things I find challenging is talking about a mid-series book without knowing how a series ends but also not wanting to spoil the books that occur previously. I attempted to discuss Mountolive by Lawrence Durrell on episode 197 of the podcast... and I still plan to read Clea before August is up!

Jenny (Reading Envy) wrote: “This sounds like an interesting concept and I haven't heard of this series before. Is it weird to read about an epidemic and monthly testing considering where we are?”

Their flu pandemic has killed 1 million people in the UK and there is no vaccine, but people who survive are immune. They don’t seem to have lockdown, masks or social distancing, and apart from mandatory testing for everyone who isn’t immune (which they are very strict about) life seems to be fairly normal. So there are a lot of differences but it’s interesting to see another way of dealing with a pandemic.