EPBOT Readers discussion

Hi everyone,

Hope everyone's hanging in there. Things are ramping up here, getting nervous again. We're in full quarantine for the last couple weeks, hoping to be safe to go to thanksgiving with my husband's parents. We haven't seen them since march, so husband's really pushing to go. They're quarantining too, so hopefully it's ok. Still really nervous, but we were able to see my parents quite a bit this summer, since they're less than a mile away. We were able to do a lot of outdoor visits and such. So I feel guilty wanting to cancel.
Hopefully goes ok.

This week I finished:

A Darker Shade of Magic - re-read so I can finish up the series. It's interesting, I listened to Nocturna a few weeks ago, and it was slow going, in part because while the Latine basis for the mythology was interesting, the plot felt a little stale. Re-reading this, I realized there's a LOT of similarities. Maybe not enough to say "oh they totally copied" but enough that it really didn't feel fresh. Both books had a thief girl who helps a magical prince. Both princes found a dark magic that gets loose due to their own folly. Both girls take charge of it because it affects the princes poorly. Both princes bring back a brother-figure from death using black magic, with bad consequences. the bad magic infects other people in both, and is tied to an artifact to both. Just a lot of similarities

Low, Vol. 2: Before the Dawn Burns Us - think i'm done with this series. I'd hoped that itd' get better, but not so much. Still lots of boobs, still lackluster writing. The pretty background art can't make up for it.

Take a Hint, Dani Brown - didn't realize this was second in a series, but luckily with romances that doesn't matter all that much. I really liked it, great writing, i liked the characters, lots of realistic issues to work through.

Currently reading:

Disappearing Earth - this is my books & brew for december. Have to say i am NOT feeling it and I'm glad it's pretty short. Have a feeling this is going to be another "everyone loves it but me" book. Just finding it boring. Id on't like any of the characters, and there's no real plot.

Grant Morrison's 18 Days - just getting started on this, but the art looks lovely

A Gathering of Shadows - I got the audiobook for this because i'm impatient and didn't want to wait for the ebook, only just started.

QOTW:

Any books that surprised you this year? Wether you enjoyed them more than expected, didn't enjoy one you expected to love, or just wasn't at all what you expected.

Harrow the Ninth. - this surprised me because I ADORED Gideon the Ninth from basically page one. Harrow didn't really come together for me until the past halfway point. In the end, the ending made up for it and I want to finish the series, but it wasn't the all together enjoyable read I expected.

Whiskey When We're Dry - i don't really enjoy westerns. A lot of times they seem to glamorize a very colonial outlook, often portray Indigenous peoples as the enemy or the problem etc. This one was really interesting. It used the vehicle of a western to examine class, gender, race, among other social issues in that era.

I have no travel plans, but it seems we're getting to the end-of-year rush at work. Probably going to be working through lunch fairly often, which cuts into my reading time.

The library's Black Lives Matter book this month is A Black Women's History of the United States. It isn't that long, but it took me forever to read because I kept getting bogged down in the prose. There were some interesting stories in it: a women petitioning to join an expedition to New Spain in 1600, conjoined twins born into slavery and exploited for "research" and entertainment, several women who refused to give up their bus seats in the months before Rosa Parks did the same... Unfortunately the way it was written reminded me so much of padding out essays for school. Maybe this is just how academic writing is, and "show, don't tell" is for fiction, but I got very tired of the authors stating and then reiterating the same conclusions. It sometimes felt patronizing, as though I'm not capable of drawing my own inferences. Also, the copy editing was extremely disappointing. I'm OK with a few typos, but there were a lot of unclear constructions like dangling modifiers, and instances where it seemed the sentence construction was changed but some of the original words were left in. I had to stop and reread some sentences to make sure I understood. Sadly I don't think I can recommend this one.

I also finished another from the box o' college books, Lettres persanes. I had been reading this a bit at a time before bed for a while. It's commentary and philosophical reflections on 16th century French society, couched in the letters of a fictional Persian traveler. Sometimes amusing, frequently boring, historically important. There is much about the failure of a banking system set up in France by a Scottish economist (thank you footnotes for explaining). Clearly a BIG DEAL at the time, but about as interesting as mortgage-backed securities will seem in a couple hundred years, I'd imagine.

QOTW: I'm sure there are several I'm not remembering right now, but the first one that sprang to mind was Love Poems for Married People. From that week's discussion: This was supposed to be funny, and I thought it would be about the less overtly romantic, warts-and-all sort of love that comes with a long-term relationship. Instead I think it should have been called Love Poems for Unhappily Married People Who Should Probably Divorce, which I didn't find amusing.

I've had a crazy draining week with very little time to read. I read one book last week, and I read the whole thing in a day: Piranesi by Susanna Clarke. It was truly lovely (and VERY different from her other bestseller, Jonathan Strange & Mr Norrell, which was a big complex foot-noted doorstopper of a book). It felt like a combination of Patricia McKillip (in dreamy tone) and Neil Gaiman (in theme), and given that I adore both of those authors I was bound to love this. I had to return it to the library, but it's one that I might consider purchasing someday so I can have my own copy to read again. I know there was a lot of symbolism that I missed because I just let myself be carried away without wanting to think too much.

I finished it on Saturday and haven't really been able to pick up another book since then, I'm just too brain-dead. Although I did start reading Reaper Man to my 4th grader, so that's always fun.

QOTW: probably the biggest surprise disappointment for me was that I DNF'd Space Opera when we read it earlier in the year. I've loved other books I've read by Catherynne M. Valente, and the description sounded absolutely delightful, but I just couldn't get into it. The positives - I was pleasantly surprised by how much I enjoyed the Wings of Fire books when my son begged me to read them. I didn't expect much and it was a good reminder that just because a book is for younger readers doesn't mean it won't be interesting to adults! I've always read YA regularly, so now I know I need to branch out into more middle grade fiction as well!

Last paper of the semester was due yesterday, so not a ton of reading this weekend/week. I picked up My Life as Emperor by Su Tong which is another one of my "I started this last summer then wandered away" books from earlier this year. So far it's kind of meh...Not as good As Raise the Red Tent was.

I am also about 3/4 way through Breakwater by Carla Neggers.

I did finish The Lunch Witch by Deb Lucke over the weekend which was amazingly cute and refreshing.

Oh! and E. and I are still listening to The Towers of Midnight by Robert Jordan. It's been a year to listen to the series as a reread and finally finishing it...

And I have The Glass Ocean by Beatriz Williams, Laura Willig. and Karen White also in my current audiobooks.

Shel, that’s good to know about the new Susana Clarke. I’d mentally dismissed reading it because I really didn’t like Johnathan Strange & Mr Norrel (although I actually liked the miniseries. They reordered stuff do the action was more evenly paced and got rid of a lot of the slow boring stuff I was dragging through)

I got through Space Opera and liked it ok, but not nearly as much as I expected to.

Sheri wrote: "Shel, that’s good to know about the new Susana Clarke. I’d mentally dismissed reading it because I really didn’t like Johnathan Strange & Mr Norrel (although I actually liked the miniseries. They r..."

Yeah, this one is really short and doesn't have any extended bits that drag at all. It's been more than a decade since I read Jonathan Strange, so my memory is hazy, but I remember it being much more ponderous than this one was.

We have no travel plans for Thanksgiving. Our youngest lives 90 minutes away and if weather allows we'll meet to go on a walk outside sometime over the weekend, but no indoor anything. We will be connecting with Zoom with whatever of our kids we can. Our son and his wife live alone on the West Coast and both ours and her family all live on the East Coast so we'll try to connect with them online too. We did a huge grocery trip today and will now hunker down for a while.

I finished listening The Last Emperox. I have mixed emotion about how that trilogy turned out. The story itself and the writing are great, per typical Scalzi. It's just not quite as a nice or satisfying ending as I would have liked.

I was going to start listening to the next Expanse book (actually the novella in the middle) but had technical difficulties with it. So instead I'm listening to Miniatures: The Very Short Fiction of John Scalzi. This is a great listen. It is a pile of very short stories. Not related to each other. Each is 2000 words or less.

I'm still reading Braiding Sweetgrass: Indigenous Wisdom, Scientific Knowledge, and the Teachings of Plants. What I've read has been interesting but the book is quite dense so I'll see how much I get through until it is due at the library and how much stamina I have to get complete it. Each chapter is fairly disjoint so if I feel I'm done, then I'll be done.

QOTW: I'm enjoying the Expanse books more than I expected.

We never go anywhere for Thanksgiving anyway, so it's just going to be the three of us (me, my partner, and his mother) as usual.

Worked picked up a bit, so no new finishes for me this week. I'm still working through Guards! Guards!. This is my Popsugar book from a series with more than 20 books.

I also started listening to The Hallowed Hunt on audio. I read this years ago when it first came out. I was disappointed in it at the time because I expected more of the characters from the first two books who I loved, but this one is an unrelated prequel. I'm trying to give it a fairer shake as a standalone this time around. It's going to be my Popsugar book with a bird on the cover.

QOTW: I think my most pleasant surprise of the year so far was probably Queens of Geek, which was a surprisingly relatable (at least to me) YA romance. I'm sure it just hit me at the right moment, but it really lifted my spirits and I enjoyed it immensely. I agree about Space Opera being a disappointment, considering how much I've enjoyed Valente's other books.

so i'm in the middle of my reread of the Sidney Sheldon books - I've got listed as currently reading Master of the Game, BUT.... i'm also writing for NaNo. my reading lags a LOT when i'm writing (but my reading has lagged a lot since 2012, when i started crocheting.

I'm anticipating being done with my NaNo on Sunday at the latest, and then i'll be able to get back to reading. i've put my holds at the library on hold, and once i'm done NaNo, i'll be releasing the holds a few at a time, and will be working my way though them. :)

I'm in Canada, so Thanksgiving is already in the rearview mirror. SO is really homesick, having moved 8 hours east from Ontario to Quebec last Halloween, and basically having very little time to develop a new social circle before everything went to hell in the spring. He really wants to go see his parents for Xmas. We haven't seen them since January 3rd. I really hope we'll find a way to make it happen.

Two finishes this week:

The Boy on the Bridge, which is a sequel to The Girl With All the Gifts. I simply love this zombie universe. Used it to fill my last prompt for the ATY challenge, a book you read because of something you read last year. That's two challenges complete. I expect to finish the 52 Book Club as well, as I've got 3 prompts to go and am using The Invisible Life of Addie LaRue for one of them.

The Bullet Journal Method: Track the Past, Order the Present, Design the Future was a quick read, as I hope to use some BuJo elements in the new planner I ordered this week.

Between work and shiny object syndrome, I have essentially set my NaNo aside with little more than an outline, but I do hope to get back to it at some point.

QOTW: I was a bit disappointed in Norse Mythology, which really caught me off guard. I suppose I enjoy his imagination as much as I do his writing, so when he's not in charge of the story, it's just ok...

I could have done without reading Roald Dahl's short adult stories.

Rise of the Valiant made me angry, or should I say, its author makes me angry. I'm beginning to suspect she sees the number of books she's written as the be all and end all. MORE BOOKS! QUICKLY! WHO CARES IF THEY ARE UNEDITED, REPETITIVE IN PHRASING, AND CONTAIN CONTRADICTORY PLOT POINTS AND INCONSISTENCIES! The worst thing is her storytelling is not bad. Just imagine what she could do if supported by a strong editing team. *smh*

On the flip side, books that were a pleasant surprise for me include Gone Girl, Sweep in Peace and Jurassic Park. Discovered plenty of authors I plan to read again, as well, like N.K. Jemisin and Joe Hill.

Oh, yes, Trystan - NaNo is murder on my reading time, too! I'm hoping to be done by Thanksgiving, but not sure it's going to happen.

(I liked Strange & Norrell's juxtaposition of fairy tale and textbook, like an ethereal brick. I did pick it up and put it down on several occasions before I finally committed to checking it out from the library.)

Jennifer wrote: "Oh, yes, Trystan - NaNo is murder on my reading time, too! I'm hoping to be done by Thanksgiving, but not sure it's going to happen."
i'm hoping to be done today.... maybe tomorrow. i'm trystan830 on instagram, the link in is my bio :)

Today I finished My Life as Emperor by Su Tong

and Breakwater by Carla Neggers.

I'm thinking I will pick up Tricks of the Trade by Laura Anne Gilman to read next.