EPBOT Readers discussion

Hi everyone,

Hope everyone's doing well this week. We had some lovely weather last week, and into the beginning of this week. Makes the abrupt drop to 40's that much harder though! Still was able to do some running, yard work, and had a fire out on the patio.

This week I finished:

Reverie - Picked this up because it was featured for my library's big read. It looked interesting so jumped on it, I liked it. Fun story idea, was pretty interesting.

Pale Demon - re-read, getting some re reads in at the end of the year.

Uprooted - another re-read. I really love her fairy tale retellings. I know her latest is the start of another series, but I really hope she returns to fairy tales again.

Currently Reading:

A Darker Shade of Magic - another re-read, have a hold on the last book and i don't really remember the earlier ones very well.

QOTW:

With the holidays coming up, are you a book giver/receiver?

I personally only like getting books if it's something I specifically asked for, usually something special. A special edition of a favorite, new book by an author I know I'll love, a specialty art book or graphic novel etc. Otherwise I'd rather people not get me books unless they're willing to actually do research, like look up my good reads and go through my read lists. I like the book flood because most people DO that, because it's the main way to shop for a stranger. With family or friends, chances are a book that "seems just my style" likely IS my style and I've read it/own it already.

I'll sometimes buy books for people if there's something on the list, but for similar reasons I'll generally not just buy random books for people. Most people I exchange gifts with aren't as avid readers as I am so aren't going to just embrace any random book (such as the giving someone your favorite book suggestions), or they'e avid enough that I'd have the same problem. I'd need to research extensively and it's easier to just buy something else.

This week I finished A Deadly Education, and really enjoyed it. It's her first YA book, and it did feel like it compared to her others, but I thought the grumpy main character and the actively malevolent school were a nice change and it was a fun read.

Also read Crossings: A Novel, enjoyed this one a lot too--the book is written as 3 separate books, with an alternate reading sequence which weaves those 3 books into one narrative, so you can read either way. I read the alternate sequence (of course), and really liked it, although I always have some trouble keeping track when there are multiple POVs with multiple bodies and names and non-chronological story telling. But I enjoyed the story, and thought the alternative reading order was a fun twist. I checked the book out again so I can skim through in the order as written and get a feel for the other sequence.

And lastly, started The Invisible Life of Addie LaRue, and am really enjoying this one too! I've been struggling with the reading list I set myself for the year picked from NPR's book list, so it was nice to set that aside and have 3 in a row that are neither full of despair nor a slog to get through.

QOTW: People don't really buy me books, which is fine with me because I don't think I know anyone who reads much in the way of SFF/speculative fiction.
Aaand I don't really buy other people books either, mostly for the same reason, although I did buy my sister a Terry Pratchett novel because everyone needs a kick to read Discworld if they haven't. :)

Weather was not so great here: flash floods yesterday. I'm in a higher area, so no issues personally, but multiple creeks flooded, including a record high for one of them.

I started the week with a return to Ngaio Marsh in Final Curtain. Our series detective returns from his war service, which means we don't get the New Zealand setting any more, but we do get him back to his wife. It's an OK trade; she's a a good character, and it was fun having her perspective for the first half of the book. This one wasn't the author's best plotting, but I did enjoy it, apart from a couple instances of racist language and some implied homophobia.

Then my multi-month hold on This Is How You Lose the Time War came in. This was another book everyone seemed to love but that I was unsure about because I don't generally go for epistolary fiction or military sci-fi. It has birds on the cover, though, so I decided to try it. I was pleasantly surprised by two things. The first is that it is not (I would argue) an epistolary novel. There are letters, yes, but there is also third-person limited-ish narration from the recipient's perspective before each letter is presented. The second is that birds do in fact feature in the story! Not the ones on the cover, specifically, but birds nonetheless. It was well-written and interesting, but time travel just presents so many storytelling issues. If you can go back in time and change things, but you don't get the outcome you want, why wouldn't you just go back and try again? Sometimes creators come up with restrictions to prevent some of these issues, but this book was more on the "don't think about it too much" side. Sorry, I'm gonna think about it too much. (I think this is why I don't tend to do well with magical realism, either. I can suspend disbelief, but I need consistency.)

QOTW: I do gift books in some cases. One is my sister, whose taste I know pretty well and whose bookshelves I have seen. I also bought the e-book of The Tea Master and the Detective for her and my cousin, because it was a fairly obscure novella so I was pretty sure they wouldn't have read it and also it was, you know, short. (This was probably more of a gift for myself, so I could declare us the Family Tea and Mystery Society.)
I will also buy books for people who do not update their wish lists or drop sufficient hints, because if I'm just guessing anyway, I'm not going to do any better with a different gift category. I figure if they've already read it, then at least it's a good reflection on my gift-selecting skills, and if they don't want it, they can donate a book somewhere just as well as a shirt they wouldn't wear or a duplicate spatula.
I don't mind receiving books, either, I suppose for the same reasons. My sister is the only one who's given me any books recently, though. I think people must feel intimidated by the taste issue, but if I'm getting something that's not quite to my personal taste, I'd rather it be a book than a chip-and-dip set or whatever. My family is progressively decreasing gift-giving anyway, so it's becoming a non-issue.

Also I haven't read Discworld, and have been considering asking for suggestions of one (1) exemplar that works sufficiently well on its own, so feel free to hit me up.

Rebecca, since it’s holiday time, I’d suggest The Hogfather. I’d say it’s pretty iconic! I might actually read it again soon, myself.

I'm kicking myself to pick up some non fiction I started last summer and wandered away from. So, I am currently reading The Devil's Highway I remember why it sucked me in last July. I'm also remembering why I set it aside...

QOTW: I love getting books as gifts because usually it's from friends and family that know what I enjoy reading - or have gleamed a title from my wishlist of books I want to read eventually. I'm a pretty non discriminatory reader, so I don't mind random "I thought you would like this" books.

My husband and I also like giving books. A lot of times it's collectors/special editions of books the recipient loves. But also can be I loved this and think you will too type gifts. For example, we bought five sets of Brent Weeks Lightbringer series over the years and gifted them to friends, or one year for Christmas I found most of the riftworld books in the library book sale nook and tracked down the rest to send to my dad.

I'm so happy to have a new spot to discuss books and I'm in the middle of a couple of different books. Love seeing someone else enjoying Ngaio Marsh, she's one of my reread authors as I love her mysteries. Discworld is as well, I've been doing a lot of comfort rereads this year and somewhere there's a chart of where to start. My recs would be either Wyrd Sisters or Guards! Guards! as they really cover the feel of Discworld.

The Angel of the Crows is the main book I'm reading which is a fascinating Sherlock Holmes' reinterpretation. I like it.

I also keep dipping into Ghost Stories of Henry James which I started after watching the Haunting of Bly Manor, and they're good.

So far the best book I've read recently is Phoenix Extravagant which is a wonderful take on the power of art and resistance. I haven't always liked Yoon Ha Lee's books as they can be fairly brutal but this one worked really well.

QOTW: I'm always giving books as present and like receiving them though I don't always read what I get. My Mom's birthday is this week and I sent her two books. It helps that I kind of know what people tend to like reading so love the hunt of finding the right book for them. For myself, I prefer being able to choose though love seeing what other people think that I might like. I miss used booksales as that's where I do a lot of my book and present buying as there are wonderful surprises there.

One finish this week: Switch Bitch, a collection of four adult-themed short stories by Roald Dahl. I added it to my Overdrive wish list when I first heard about it, because I was both floored and fascinated, and I used it for the 20th book prompt (from that TBR list) from ATY. Just one more prompt to go to finish this second challenge - something you are prompted to read because of something you read in 2018. So it'll be a book 2 in a series, I'm guessing.

QOTW: My inlaws get me gift cards, and my fiancé takes me shopping (or he did, back when going shopping in leisurely fashion was a thing!), so while I don't get books, I certainly get support for my book habit. I have bought books as gifts in the past, but it's not a habit of mine.

And like Kate, I am missing used book fairs something fierce, although I still have TBR stacks from last year's haul!

I finally finished The Unlikely Escape of Uriah Heep the other day. It took me a while to get into, but I think that was more a function of my limited attention span this week than anything about the book. It reminded me a lot of the Thursday Next books, but darker - and the author cites Jasper Fforde as a major influence, so no surprise there. I did wish I had more of a background in Dickens, I think I'd have appreciated it more if I'd actually read David Copperfield! Parry did a good job of giving enough information about the book characters that you didn't NEED to have read the books they came from, but I think it would certainly have enhanced the enjoyment.

I finished reading through The Winglets Quartet with my kiddo - some fun prequel novellas for the Wings of Fire series - and speaking of Discworld, we're going to pick up Reaper Man next :)

QOTW: I pretty much could have written what Sheri wrote. People who don't know my taste get me books that I'm not especially interested in, people who do know my taste get me books that I already own. Pretty much the only person who can get away with successfully buying me a book that I'll enjoy that wasn't specifically requested is my spouse, who already knows exactly what's on my shelf...I guess that's why I married him ;) (our second date was dinner at an Indian restaurant when we spent the entire several hours discussing our favorite books, starting with Brust's Vlad Taltos series, so yeah. We're a good match) And also the book flood because people who sign up do their research well!

Last week I finished A Tale for the Time Being, which I used for my Popsugar book set in Japan, even though it was only the diary entries portion of the story that was. I mostly enjoyed it, but I found the journal entries by the teenage Japanese girl far more compelling than the framing story of the Canadian author, an obvious author stand-in, reading it and researching her story.

I'm currently reading Guards! Guards!, which I know I read years and years ago when I was in high school (eek!), but I made up my mind to get back into Pratchett again. This will be my Popsugar book from a series with more than 20 books.

QOTW: I'm with you, Sheri. Unless it's a book with special meaning or something I've specifically asked for, I would rather have a gift card and select my own books, to be honest, than get a book I have zero interest in or already own. I occasionally give books if there's one on someone's wish list or a specific request, but usually if I want to give a book gift, I'll give gift cards, too.

This week I started and finished I'd Give Anything. I really enjoyed it. I would go to bed early to read extra long with this one, which is fairly rare for me. It is a great story. Not a romance, but a general life kind of novel. But I really liked it a lot. It was written intelligently with realistic characters. I recommend it. It also isn't long, under 300 pages.

Since I finished that last night I started reading Braiding Sweetgrass: Indigenous Wisdom, Scientific Knowledge, and the Teachings of Plants. I will see how I like this.

I am super close to finishing listening to The Last Emperox. I have less than an hour left in an 8 hour audiobook. He recently threw a huge curveball into the story that I'm trying to get over and seeing how it plays out. As always, Scalzi + Wil Wheaton is a good time.

QOTW: I only buy books as gifts if the person has specifically asked for that book or is someone I know very well and know what they have or read, like my husband. I rarely ask for books for gifts. My daughter got me a 3 month subscription as a Christmas gift to Book Of the Month Club that I enjoyed. You get to pick from several title so you're not locked in to one book or genre.

Last Christmas that same daughter got my husband and I a puzzle book The Maze of Games that is filled with variety puzzles and a story woven through it. She also got us a book on how to create variety puzzles are created. (I forget the title and am not near the book. I haven't read it yet.) We write in the puzzle book as we solve it and this was an awesome book we hadn't asked for.

I might buy non-fiction books for people such as a cookbook. So I think books that are a bit non-traditional are safer ground.

At last check in, I was struggling through Yellow Crocus. I won't rehash my rant from last week, but by the end of it I was at least somewhat convinced that the author had good intentions. If you go into it expecting sort of an American Girls book for adults, with lots of fairly clunky historical exposition aimed at readers with absolutely no prior knowledge of American history or slavery (where one would find such people, I shudder to think), then it is less horrifying in its tone-deafness. I still look forward to talking to IRL book club #1 about maybe pumping the breaks on any future suggestions of books by white ladies about slavery whenever someone gets around to scheduling our next online meeting to talk about this one.

By the time I finished that, my hold on The Invisible Life of Addie LaRue had come in. I will reserve extended discussion for the appropriate threads, but in summary, I enjoyed it but not as much as some similar things I've read.

After that, I stopped procrastinating and finally re-read Kindred for my online alumni book club. I read it in school almost 30 years ago, and was not a fan then, but decided I should give it another chance. I'm glad I did - it's still not my favorite Octavia Butler, but I appreciate the ambiguity of the characters much more now that I've read so many later knockoffs that were much less nuanced. It was probably also good timing to read it so soon after Yellow Crocus. This is what that one was going for, but without assuming that the reader just landed from Mars and is unfamiliar with any aspect of the antebellum south, and with much more nuanced characters and situations that really do make you understand the choices they make (even if you don't always agree with them) rather than relying on improbable coincidences. Which is quite a statement when a book that is based upon unexplained time travel requires less suspension of disbelief. So if you haven't given this one another chance since school, I definitely recommend revisiting it as an adult.

I'm now reading Assaulted Caramel for another Goodreads group - it's the opposite of groundbreakingly original, but really well done. There's a reason the cozy formula works, and I appreciate the skill of authors who do it this perfectly.

I also had some time to continue listening to Nut Jobs: Cracking California's Strangest $10 Million Dollar Heist, which is really all over the place, but fairly diverting for a long drive. Hopefully I'll find an excuse to wrap it up even though I don't have plans to leave home again for quite a while.

QOTW: My family was very into giving books as gifts through most of my life, and I do actually enjoy seeing what various people think I would enjoy. Since I read all kinds of things, I've gotten quite a variety. I actually just got a box in the mail yesterday as an early Christmas present from a friend in Minneapolis that was a mystery selection from Once Upon a Crime, which was fun. I've given my mom various book subscription boxes over the past few years, since that gives her a surprise every month. I don't exchange presents with as many people these days since so many relatives are older and downsizing, but I will occasionally pick up a copy of something that I read that strikes me as something a specific friend or relative would enjoy. The best/worst was when I bought my aunt who is deeply interested in environmental causes and sustainable agriculture a copy of The Good Food Revolution: Growing Healthy Food, People, and Communities (which I notice has since received a new cover design that emphasizes the subtitle), and she thought it was a diet book and was confused and slightly offended (she is very thin, and I am very not) until I suggested she read the summary on the back.