EPBOT Readers discussion

Hi everyone,

Been a rough week, glad it's almost over! Hopefully the weekend improves.

This week I finished:

Ninefox Gambit - read harder debut book by a queer author. It was a bit of a slow start, but once I got into it and started figuring out the world I really liked it. Ended up getting the second book, although it'll probably be a while before I get to it.

The Ocean at the End of the Lane - did audio book for something easy to listen to over the weekend. Been a while since i read it, not my favorite Gaiman but it was nice to listen to him read.

Currently reading:

The Sparrow - My books & brew for September, also counting it as Read Harder's doorstopper written by a woman after 1950. I like it overall, although there's some things that bother me. Interesting take on making contact with alien life. Will be interesting to discuss!

Nocturna - current audio book, found it on a list of fantasy novels based on non-european cultures. This one is Latinex inspired, not really far enough to have an opinion yet.

QOTW:

I'll borrow from popsugar again: Does a beautiful cover influence you when picking books?

I'll say that a beautiful cover will certainly catch my eye and make me pick it up to read the blurb, however I won't necessarily get it or read it just because of the cover. I generally want some assurance that I'll like it. However if I get it through the library or on a digital sale, and I LOVE it, I might buy it physically just to own the pretty cover. I also totally bought a second copy of Neuromancer just because I found a cool hardcover version that was cloth bound and foil embossed. Also one time I did buy a weird wizard book conceived of by Kobe Bryant because it was velvet covered with gold embossing and just generally gorgeous. The lady at the counter swore it was great, although I haven't gotten around to trying it yet. However I was mostly buying to support a local bookstore + beautiful. I probably wouldn't have bought if i just saw it at Barnes and Nobel or online.

At last check in, I was in the midst of A Willing Murder, and I finished that and made it halfway through A Justified Murder before IRL book club #1's Sunday night meetup. The actual chosen book was the third one, A Forgotten Murder, but I can't start a series on the third book, so I was trying to read them all. The conversation about the book confused me - I started to wonder if I read the wrong series, but some of the characters seemed the same...so I kept going after the meetup and finished the second and third. I immediately regretted wasting my time with the first two - I would have been fine going right into the third, since the first two books focus on a complex but deeply uninteresting mystery about events in Florida 20 years ago (which is never resolved), and in the third book, the three main characters abruptly decide to go to England, where there is a completely separate mystery requiring no information provided in the first two. I actually enjoyed the third one - the super forced "will they or won't they" and bizarre fatphobia that made the first two hard to get through are much less obvious there. I mean, there's still the baseline fatphobia and homophobia that makes me avoid that kind of mass market mystery/romance to begin with, but it was more "interesting because it's not something I'd usually read" than "I need to fling this book and its author into the sun" like the first two.

I'm now working my way through The Cornwalls Vanish for IRL book club #2, which is not grabbing me for some reason. At face value, it's pretty action-packed, but I think there's too many characters to get very invested in any of them, and it's also that Liam Neeson/Taken genre that I seem to be done with based on how I've felt about other books recently.

QOTW: I don't know that I make many decisions to read something or not based on the cover, but the cover definitely sets my expectations for every book. There are certain cover designs that draw me in more than others, and some that make me roll my eyes and take a deep breath. I like modern, clean designs that are still somewhat whimsical - they (sometimes erroneously) make me think the book will be modern and well planned. Some of my recent favorites are all of the Alma Jaramillo series with the loteria cards that relate to the theme, The Emerald Circus (Jane Yolen) with the eye-catching green and yellow that immediately puts you into the Emerald City, The Diviners series (Libba Bray) with the mix of retro images and modern colors, the Rivers of London series with the maps relating to the action in the book....

I finished The Poison Squad: One Chemist's Single-Minded Crusade for Food Safety at the Turn of the Twentieth Century, and it got a bit more engaging toward the end. I probably should have just watched the PBS version.

I also read A Necessary Evil. I had read the first in the series, about a former Scotland Yard investigator working in India just after WWI. He is Troubled, and the book was more thriller than mystery, but I liked the character of the British-educated Indian sergeant. I thought maybe this book would settle into a more solid mystery, but instead it convinced me that the protagonist should find a new job. The descriptions of life in India during the British Raj, but the detective just seemed to bumble around until he eventually stumbled on the truth - after it was too late.

QOTW: In the Before Times, I picked a good number of my reads based on the covers/spines at the library, although like Sheri I would certainly read the blurb first. I'm not sure "beautiful" would be the criterion, though; "interesting" would be more like it.

I will, however, take this opportunity to tell you about the one book I own based solely on the cover. When my grandfather - the one to whom I ascribe the genetic origin of my mysteryphilia - died, some of the family gathered in his home after the funeral to look through the will. It was oddly specific, with various individuals being left specific items, notably pieces from my late grandmother's extensive collection of owl figurines. (A bird guide was consulted to locate the referenced "Lenox saw-whet owl".) We all had a laugh about this, and then my aunt, who was the executor, asked if there was anything we'd actually like to have. I selected a ceramic alligator that was still sporting a friendship bracelet necklace I had made for it as a child, and decided I should also pick out a book. I just went to the shelf and looked for one that had the most vintage mystery style, and I ended up with this:

I did of course read it, and it's not bad. That title, though, and the Saul-Bass-style font... love it.

Rebecca wrote: "I finished The Poison Squad: One Chemist's Single-Minded Crusade for Food Safety at the Turn of the Twentieth Century, and it got a bit more engaging toward the end. I probably shou..."

Thank you for sharing this lovely book story!

Ooh, Sheri, I adore The Sparrow. I think I've read it 3 or 4 times. Definitely disturbing but so good. I'd stay away from the sequel, though, I thought it undid everything that I loved about the first book. I like to pretend that it doesn't exist.

This week I finally finished We Want to Do More Than Survive: Abolitionist Teaching and the Pursuit of Educational Freedom and I think anyone in education needs to read it immediately. In a similar social justice vein my library loan came through for Just Mercy: A Story of Justice and Redemption, and I couldn't put it down. I need to look up the movie now!

After finishing those two I decided I needed to give my brain a bit of a break, so I picked up some old favorite short stories that I've read several times over - Ursula K. LeGuin's collection The Birthday of the World and Other Stories. I absolutely adore these stories - each one is kind of a thought experiment about different kinds of societies with different expectations and roles regarding gender, marriage, social interaction, etc. The final story is a generation ship story about the middle generations of the voyage - not the ones who launched the ship, not the ones who will be landing on the destination planet, but what's it like along the journey? She understands human nature so well that her stories always make me think while they entertain me.

I'm back to light reading now with The Human Division, the fifth book in John Scalzi's Old Man's War series for my other goodreads group series read.

QOTW: An interesting cover will always make me pick up a book and read the back, but I usually rely on the blurb to tell me whether I'm actually interested in reading it. One exception was this one:

I saw it on a shelf, was totally captivated by the artwork, didn't have time to read the blurb, and just bought it. This was forever ago - I think I was still in high school - and I hadn't yet been burned by mediocre books with gorgeous covers :D I lucked out and it was amazing (I love the whole trilogy).

This week I started listening to Cibola Burn, the 4th Expanse book. I think I will take a break from the Expanse books after I finish this one.

I finished listening to A Very Scalzi Christmas. It was essentially a novella, being about 3 hours. It was kind of fun to listen to it in August. I needed something lighthearted but interesting and this fit the bill. This was written and released in mid-2019. There was one in particular, called "Jangle the Elf grants wishes" where Jangle is called into his boss' office to have a talk about how he went about granting people's wishes in some very creative ways. Then at the end when they're talking about a wish for world peace, and the boss says that Jangle will have to pass on that one so as to not use sudden nuclear holocaust ... or a humanity eradicating plague... The prescience on that one is spot on.

I am in the middle ofThe Wedding Date. I need a little of this fluff in my reading life right now.

I have a couple non-fiction books queued up because I put them on hold at the library because they were checked out and we were only allowed to get books in our own town library. But then apparently they lifted that restriction and suddenly my two non-fiction books arrived. I wasn't really ready for them yet. I'll write them up in coming weeks.

QOTW: I used to go into the library and they had a big display of new books near the checkout desk. I would definitely look over them. I'm probably more drawn by non-fiction covers and blurbs to at least pick it up and see what it's about. But most often I'm ordering from my TBR list on GR so I'm not actually seeing any covers.

Rebecca - I loved your story!

Two finishes this week, after a solid two-week drought:

Norse Mythology, which was ok. I apparently love Neil Gaiman's imagination and world-building more than his words. Used for the Slytherin/Silver/book of mythology prompt.

The Prophet, which I picked up because I needed a short audiobook, and I wound up enjoying immensely. Doesn't fit any of my remaining One PHRC prompts, but I did get in slotted in a couple of other challenges I'm tracking.

48/60

QOTW: Like Sheri, a pretty cover might draw my eye, but I'm very fussy about the books that make it onto my permanent shelves. I will splurge on a lovely cover of a book I already love without blinking.

That said, I did pick up The Diamond Throne at an airport pretty much based on the cover and blurb, and it was my introduction to one of my favourite authors!