EPBOT Readers discussion

Hi Everyone,

I missed last week, thank you Sheri for posting. I hope Teddy is getting through the treatments okay. I know you said there are several weeks to go so I'm just hoping it is going as well as can be expected. Hang in there. Everyone here is thinking of you.

I have three finishes in the past week. First I finished The Code Breaker: Jennifer Doudna, Gene Editing, and the Future of the Human Race for neighborhood book club this past week. This was a very interesting book and led to A LOT of good discussion. Often these meetings discuss the book for 20-30 minutes. This time it was nearly the whole time. It was also a book that was atypical for most members. I love science so I enjoyed it. But the ethical discussions of gene editing kept the talks lively.

I also finished the FoE book club selection on audiobook The Left-Handed Booksellers of London. This was only okay for me. I enjoyed it enough. I may or may not read/listen to the next book. I'll try to put thoughts on the discussion thread more than here.

The third book I finished was Glucose Revolution: The Life-Changing Power of Balancing Your Blood Sugar. About 18 months ago my physical bloodwork showed pre-diabetes. I have done all the things suggested, changed my diet, lost 33 lbs (25% of my weight and now low end of normal), increased exercise even though I was already super active. And the number has not budged. I'm trying the suggestions in the book for avoiding glucose spikes after meals. The author is a biochemist, not a medical doctor but she cites research papers for all the claims she makes. And her suggestions are simple enough to implement and unlikely to be harmful. Things such as change the order of the food you eat to slow the absorption of glucose, walk 15-20 minutes after a meal, drink a glass of water with 1Tblsp of vinegar in it before a meal, etc. Maybe they'll make a difference, maybe not.

I'm now back to A Walk in the Woods: Rediscovering America on the Appalachian Trail. Our weekend trip to Maine last weekend had us hiking on the AT for a couple miles.

Next up for me is Lessons in Chemistry on audiobook for next month's neighborhood book club.

This week my husband and I finished watching the Ted Lasso series finale as well as the Marvelous Mrs. Maisel series finale. Although they're not books they felt like a "finish" of sorts and noteworthy for some reason.

QOTW:
Do you enjoy reading aloud?

I actually do enjoy it. My opportunities are much more limited these days since my kids are adults. Maybe someday there will be grandchildren to read to. Sometimes at work when we've gone over research type papers we read them aloud, or at meetings.

I wonder if reading aloud in a group falls into a similar category as public speaking in terms of personal anxiety. I am neutral on public speaking. I'm an introvert so I don't necessarily seek it out, but I'm just fine giving a talk in front of a (friendly) crowd.

Hi, everyone!

Finished:
Last Canto of the Dead by Daniel José Older - 4 stars - not for a prompt. A good conclusion to the duology but definitely not the place to start. It needs the first book.

American Panda by Gloria Chao - 4 stars - for a forbidden romance (Popsugar). I loved this. The romance was so sweet, and Mei's family was so infuriating.

Comics & manga:
Skip·Beat!, Vol. 48
Monthly Girls' Nozaki-kun, Vol. 2
Lovesick Ellie, Vol. 4
Lovesick Ellie, Vol. 5

Currently reading:
Witch King by Martha Wells - for the mythical creatures Popsugar prompt. So far, I am loving this, but it is very different from Wells' Murderbot series. This is epic fantasy, and she throws you in without a lot of exposition to figure things out on your own through context. I love this style of fantasy storytelling, but YMMV.

Upcoming/Planned:
The Grimoire of Grave Fates (anthology)
Translation State by Ann Leckie

QOTW:
Sometimes. I've enjoyed reading aloud to my partner before. I don't think I would enjoy reading aloud to strangers, though.

It also depends on the book. If it's a fantasy or sci-fi with hard-to-pronounce, made-up names/other words, then I struggle with reading it aloud unless I've heard the pronunciation in, say, the audiobook version.

Hi all,
Thanks Susan for getting a post up, end of week got a little hectic.

Teddy is doing pretty well. He's grumpy today from starting treatment back up after the weekend. I guess he's learning what Mondays are like for everyone else, and isn't a fan. But so far no real ill effects, which we're thankful for.

Had a nice weekend, lovely weather. We celebrated our 10 year wedding anniversary with an amazing dinner at a restaurant we've been wanting to try for ages. It wasn't Amsterdam (where we'd planned to be this month, prior to the whole diagnosis) but it was still lovely. Hopefully Amsterdam next year! Then we popped over to the pride festival and said hi to friends and hung out a bit. Had some relaxing back yard pool time and went kayaking Sunday as well.

Finished:

Yellowface - this was a little bit of a disappointment for me. I was looking forward to this so much! I have enjoyed her other works, so I was interested to see her take on something that wasn't historical fiction with a touch of fantasy. But it just fell flat for me. The plot reminded me a lot of uh..well The Plot. Which I didn't particularly enjoy either. And I felt like it meandered a lot and never really came to a satisfactory end.

Gunpowder Alchemy - read for the vaginal fantasy book club on discord. I forgot about it so ended up reading it in about a day, luckily it was a pretty fast, easy read. Nothing particularly amazing or stellar about it, but it was enjoyable enough. Thought it was an interesting take on the steampunk genre, turning it into more gunpowder punk due to the China setting. The main character got kidnapped a lot which was a little annoying, but she wasn't complacent about it which saved it some. My biggest peeve was really that a lot of stuff kept getting introduced and completely dropped. People would show up and feel important just to never be mentioned again. And the ending was pretty abruptly segued into "go read the next book". i might eventually, it was pretty cheap (maybe free?) but not so gripping that i feel like i just HAVE to know what's going on.

When We Were Magic - This was a weird one for me. I enjoyed it while i was listening to it, but once I stopped to think about it at all, stuff really kind of fell apart. So many things were just...hand waved away.

The Bone Season - i was pretty disappointed in this one too. I really love priory of the orange tree, so was excited to read something else by the author. But this just didn't hold up nearly as well. Although it was apparently her debut novel, so i suppose it makes sense. But the characters were not nearly as compelling, nor was the world building. I felt much more confused, and just kind of slogged along hoping it'd improve eventually. I am not really sure it did. I was slightly intrigued but not really enough I feel compelled to read another one. Especially when there's supposed to be 7 books in this series and the rest aren't even done yet.

Currently reading:

A Day of Fallen Night - Speaking of Priory, I at least get a new book set in the same world even if the other one fell flat. I just started it, but i already am settling into it better.

The Maid - current audio book. It's interesting, i'm enjoying listening to it so far.

QOTW:

I don't really. I don't have a problem with public speaking, if it's something I can prepare ahead of time. Then I can try to memorize it or at least be familiar enough that I only need to glance down at what I'm reading to remind myself of where I am or what comes next.

If I am reading blind, my eyes tend to read faster than my mouth and I'll get lost and start stumbling. Also I have the problem many readers have that you see words and you don't actually know how to pronounce them outside of text, so I always get nervous about that. If I'm preparing ahead of time I can listen to pronunciations and practice if anything is unfamiliar.

After vacation and the holiday, I'm back to a full 5-day week for the first time in a while, le sigh.

“You Just Need to Lose Weight”: And 19 Other Myths About Fat People - This author cohosts the "Maintenance Phase" podcast, about which I have heard very good things, but since I cannot with podcasts I thought I'd read the book. It was all right, but I was hoping for more science while the book took a more social justice approach. I think part of that is actually that there is unfortunately less science available on the topic than one would hope.

QOTW: I don't really have much call to read anything aloud; no kids, doesn't really come up at work. I guess I don't really mind it, but like Sheri, I tend to read at the speed of my eyes rather than my mouth if I don't pay enough attention.