EPBOT Readers discussion

Hi all, sorry for the delay getting a post up.

Hope everyone had a good weekend. It was mostly just getting half bath ready for tile and relaxing.

This week I finished:

Code Girls: The Untold Story of the American Women Code Breakers Who Helped Win World War II - finished the audio book. I enjoyed it, I hadn't known much about the code breaking, or that so many women were involved.

Silver Nitrate - This was fun, sort of light gothic horror. This was the last book i needed for popsugar, so i'm finished with that, woo!

Lady Tan's Circle of Women - This was really interesting. It was historical fiction, but based on a real woman doctor in China, who specialized in treating women, both of the upper class and working women. Most the cases in the book were ones based off the journal that she wrote, and then the author filled in the story around how she might have come across these various women.

Love in the Time of Cholera - I'd heard a lot of good things about Gabriel Garcia Marquez and how he's the father of magical realism and such. But I kind of hated this book. The writing was pretty enough, but the story was just...gross. I'm so tired of reprehensible behavior being excused because "it's love!". (view spoiler)[ Sorry, obsessing over someone for 50 years, trying to interfere in their marriage, having affairs with hundreds of women to "heal your heart" and grooming your child ward when you're sixty years older than her and then only feeling bad when she commits suicide later because "you loved her" not because you're horrified at what you did does not make you a man who is moved only by love. (hide spoiler)]

Currently reading:

Dread Nation - TBR challenge book, only one left after this! I'm liking it so far, about half through.

Fourth Wing - sometimes i like to jump on a hot book specifically so I can try to experience it before it gets SO talked about that it can't live up to the hype. So when i saw the audio book of this was available at my library, i snagged it just to see what the fuss is about.

QOTW:

Are there any super popular books that you dislike?

I guess there's not that many that i've actively disliked, I tend to avoid ones that don't seem up my alley at all. Plenty haven't lived up to the hype, but that usually for me just means that I still liked it, just not as much as I expected to.

One I can think of in particular was A Gentleman in Moscow, which was a book club pick or I probably wouldn't have read it otherwise. I really didn't like the main character at all, it felt boring to me, I'd rather have focused on pretty much any other character than the main perspective guy. It's one of the few one stars i've given out, usually i nope out of a book or won't even read it if it looks that unappealing to me. But pretty much every other person at my book club LOVED the book andI know in other goodreads groups people rave over his books in general.

Hi all. We're going through a bit of a heat wave for us (high 80s-low 90s) which is unusual. I might actually go into the office more this week just for air conditioning.

Finished:
Family Lore by Elizabeth Acevedo - 3 stars - for Popsugar's book that comes out in the second half of 2023. I wished I had liked this more, because Acevedo's writing was as beautiful as ever, but I just didn't really connect to any of the characters or care about what happened to them.

Illuminations by T. Kingfisher - 4.5 stars - for Popsugar's book that was self-published. I loved this. More fun middle-grade from Kingfisher, with a magic system involving art and paintings.

Comics & manga:
Toilet-bound Hanako-kun Vol. 18
Run on Your New Legs Vol. 5
Honey and Clover, Vol. 7
Honey and Clover, Vol. 8
Honey and Clover, Vol. 9
Honey and Clover, Vol. 10
Monthly Girls' Nozaki-kun, Vol. 9
Komi Can't Communicate, Vol. 26

Currently reading:
Light of the Jedi by Charles Soule - for Popsugar's book based on a popular movie

Upcoming/Planned:
Thornhedge by T. Kingfisher - not for a prompt

QOTW:
I don't tend to read a lot of super-popular books, or if I do, I usually read them years later. Like you said, Sheri, I tend to avoid those that I don't think I will like.

The big one, I guess, would be Lord of the Rings. I feel like I should have liked it, but I just couldn't get into it. I respect what it was to the fantasy genre, but I just don't find the characters or story interesting and barely got through the first book.

Another popular one that I DNFed was Outlander. I just didn't like the main characters or think the "romance" was romantic in the slightest.

Oh Lord of the Rings is one for me too haha. I read the Hobbit and liked it ok, but then I read The Fellowship of the Ring and just didn't care enough to finish. Like you said, Jen, I appreciate what it means to the fantasy world, but It's just not for me.

I adore Lord of the Rings, but I can definitely see how it's not quite as engaging as more modern fantasy. I will say that unlike most cases, I found myself appreciating it more in the film format - the stunning visuals and gorgeous score make it much easier to immerse yourself in the world, and I found that after I saw the films I went and re-read the books and absolutely loved them, compared to the first time I read and just liked them. I have not seen the Hobbit films, because I think it's ridiculous that they blew up a short children's book into a trilogy of long movies.

Anyway. Been a hell of a week over here; our basement and garage flooded in the big storms last week, and the gas cans we keep in the garage for the snowblower leaked into the floodwater so we had gasoline mixed in with the flooded basement. If it was just water we'd handle it ourselves, but with the gas mixed in we felt like we needed to call in the pros. We just had our insurance adjuster over this morning to take a look at the damage and hopefully we'll get some help paying for it all.

I did read some good books though!
The Adventures of Amina al-Sirafi - this was SO much fun! I love a middle-aged mother as a protagonist, and this particular middle-aged mother also happens to be a retired pirate captain who of course gets pulled back into the seafaring life when shenanigans occur. I look forward to more of her adventures! I slotted this in the "involves travel" prompt.

Gryphon in Light - I will always rush to the library for a new Valdemar book. This one picks up where Owlknight left off and features both old friends and new characters. I wouldn't start here because there is SO much backstory but if you're as much of a Valdemar nut as I am, this is definitely a good one! Used for the "light" prompt (duh).

The Poppy War - my other GR group is reading this trilogy so I picked up the first book from the library. It had some first-novel flaws but was still a 4-star read. It starts off as a fairly standard "intelligent peasant girl tests into elite acadamy and is treated like crap by wealthy high-class peers" kind of story but takes a really dark turn about a third of the way through. Lots of moral ambiguity and a fascinating main character who eventually makes some ... dubious ... choices along the way. CW for graphic descriptions of wartime violence and rape. "Shadow on the cover" prompt.

QotW: Within the SF/F genre, I could not get more than a few chapters into Gene Wolfe. I was also left unmoved by the first Thomas Covenant book by Stephen Donaldson and never continued the series.

In more mainstream fiction, I tend to think most popular thrillers are pretty dumb and the characters behave in totally improbable ways.

Shel, I am with you on Thomas Covenant. I DNFed the first book about halfway through and never looked back. I've still never tried Gene Wolfe.

Hi all,

I've been on vacation for the last 3 weeks so not around too much, some reading time but not as much as you might expect. We were on a tour with a family group of 13 that we don't get to see often so we were socializing a lot.

On the trip I finished Steamed Open. It was a cozy mystery set in Maine. It is apparently book 7 of the author's Maine books. Maybe I'll look for others sometime. It was a good read for a trip.

On the airplane I listened to, and finished, Tomorrow, and Tomorrow, and Tomorrow. I enjoyed the book but not over the top in love with it. I give it 4 stars. I'm a woman in tech from the late 1980s so I related to a bunch of it. But sometimes the characters annoyed me in some ways I can't quite pinpoint. I'm glad I read it, as it has been recommended in a lot of place including Bill Gates' reading list.

I started another quick paperback I picked up for the trip, The Carousel. I'm about halfway through. It was written in the 1980s and some parts feel a bit dated. It is enjoyable enough to finish it.

My next neighborhood book club book is Lady Tan's Circle of Women. I was interested in Sheri's comment above about it! I just started listening to it today. I think this one will be good for lively discussion in the group, similar to other women-oriented books of all types have been for us.

QOTW:
For me, recent books that didn't live up to the hype were Lessons in Chemistry and The Lincoln Highway also by Amor Towles (Gentleman in Moscow). My book club read both and I was just meh on both (and a number of others they've chosen). I'm also pretty ambivalent about LotR.

In contrast, long ago I did enjoy and finish the Thomas Covenant series and Stephen Donaldson's The Mirror of Her Dreams two-book series. At the time in the late 1980s I really loved that book. I wonder if any of them have aged well.

I took a four-day weekend and had a mini-vacation: stayed at a vineyard, did a little hike at a state park, drank acceptable wine from a mediocre wine-growing area, and saw some meteors.

The Very Secret Society of Irregular Witches - So I thought this was going to be a super popular book I wouldn't like, buuut actually I did. I appreciated that the fantasy element was well defined, so the world of witches felt substantial, but the arc of the plot really felt more like a romance novel than other recent fantasies I've read.

Les Vrilles De La Vigne - This is a collection of works by the French author Colette, and the title translates to "the tendrils of the vine", so it felt appropriate for vineyard reading. I had seen a description that said it was novellas, but I would call them personal essays, variously about love, aging, and a surprising number about various cats and dogs she owned. She's a very evocative writer, but she likes nature imagery, so I did have to look up a whole lot of plant names. (Also an insect which I think she might not have used so poetically if writing in English, as it translated to "cockchafer"; I then had to look that up and it's just some kind of scarab beetle.)

Did not finish:
How to Read Now - I gave up after about 50 pages in the middle of extended literary criticism of a book I have not read, have no intention of reading, and had in fact not previously heard of. If the answer to the title is "don't read books by Nobel-Prize-winning Austrians" then I am doing OK on my own.

QOTW: The only one I can think of that I really disliked is The Goldfinch. Like Sheri said, sometimes I think books are overhyped but not terrible. Sometimes I do read ones I think are not going to be my scene, so even if I am not pleasantly surprised like I was this time, I'm also not too disappointed.

I never read The Goldfinch, but I HATED her earlier book The Secret History.