Ultimate Popsugar Reading Challenge discussion

This discussion thread is to mark your completion of the January challenge to fulfill prompt #19 A book set in the future.

Ellis Island opened on New Year’s Day 1892, which was also a leap year! Most all who made it to Ellis Island were simply hoping for a better future. The NEW YEAR is usually focused on the future with setting resolutions, etc. January 1 is also WORLD DAY OF PEACE! More of which this world needs in the future, IMO!

Please include the following information about this book:

Title:
Author:
Would you recommend this book?

Title: Binti
Author: Nnedi Okorafor
Would you recommend this book? ⭐⭐ It was well written just not for me. It is a novella but I was really bored reading it. This is the first in a series. If you like sci-fi in the vein of Ursula Le Guin or Octavia Butler this might be for you.

Title: Chain-Gang All Stars

Author: Nana Kwame Adjei-Brenyah

⭐️⭐️⭐️

A gripping and eye-opening book. No spoilers. Adjei-Brenyah wrote a story that inspires me to read more about the injustice of the “justice system” and reminds me that the lives of POC are much different than mine. It’s not a genre I would usually read. I felt that it was muddied up and complicated in a way that made it difficult to finish. It was an ok read.

Title: Chain-Gang All-Stars
Author: Nana Kwame Adjei-Brenyah

⭐⭐⭐⭐/5

Would I recommend this book?: Yes. While dystopian novels about the government forcing its citizens to fight to the death have been done to, well, death, I think this offered enough novelty to really be worthwhile. We get small glimpses into the mentality of the people who watch this "entertainment," enough to see how this desensitization is warping them. Of the four main characters (Hurricane, Thurwar, Craft, and Singer), not one of them got the ending I was expecting for them, and I really appreciated that their crimes were only mentioned in passing; because it doesn't matter what they did to end up here, no one deserves to end up here. The only thing that prevented it from being a 5 out of 5 for me was that I personally don't love authors with super strong voices (David Sedaris, Neal Stephenson, etc) and felt Adjei-Brenyah's writing had that really strong "author voice" which kind of took me out of the story a bit.

Title: Left Behind
Author: Tim LaHaye, Jerry B. Jenkins
Would you recommend this book? Depends; This book probably isn't for everyone. I enjoyed it though.

Title: Chain-Gang All-Stars
Author: Nana Kwame Adjei-Brenyah
Would you recommend this book? yes

5/5 stars

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Title: All Systems Red
Author: Martha Wells
Would you recommend this book? Yes, very quick read and bonus... you can use the other books in the series for a book set in space or a genre that you don't typically read.

4/5 Stars

Title: Chain-Gang All-Stars
Author: Nana Kwame Adjei-Brenyah
Would you recommend this book? : Yes, I liked it a lot. It was infuriating and terrifying and I really loved it. The one thing I wish I got to see more of was just Thurwar and Staxxx. The vignettes from POVs of other characters were informative, but I really wanted to see how those two found joy in a world that was so determined to take it from them.

Title: Chain-Gang All-Stars
Author: Nana Kwame Adjei-Brenyah
Would you recommend this book? yes

5/5 stars

I would not normally have chosen a book about prison gladiators on my own, but I am so grateful for the recommendation because this book was an epic read.

It features multiple POVs from so many different backgrounds and stakes in the Chain-Gang All Stars system. You have sport commentators, fans, protestors, game organizers (I.e. board members) and participants at different rankings.

What really got me was using Google when I was reading to research the books footnotes: the American penal statistics used are FACTS. And they hit as hard as Thurwar's hammer.

I don't want to spoil this book for anyone, but I want to recommend it to everyone. It matters, and I hope that by reading it, you will sit with yourself and think about justice and whether or not the penal system we use today is meant to reform to punish or to profit from crime. I'm going to be asking myself these same questions and consider carefully.

Title: The Other Valley
Author: Scott Alexander Howard
Would you recommend this book? Yes, I rated it 4 stars and it is a quiet, character study slower read of a book.

Title: The Imposition of Unnecessary Obstacles
Author: Malka Ann Older
Would you recommend this book? Yes, although I would suggest reading the first novella first if you haven't, which would also work for this prompt. Both are sort of a cozy sci-fi mystery set in a future in which humanity had to leave Earth, and built platforms around Jupiter on which they now live.

Title: Cold People
Author: Tom Rob Smith
Would you recommend this book? For the most part, yes. There's a certain amount of suspending of disbelief that needs to be done for this book, but it was never boring.

Title: Arch-Conspirator
Author: Veronica Roth
Recommend: Absolutely! I loved this short sci-fi retelling of Antigone.

Title: The Giver
Author: Lois Lowry
Would you recommend this book? Yes! I'm as old as dirt, and this book wasn't written when I was a kid. I'm sure I would have loved it then, and I really liked it now.

Title: The Midnight Feast
Author: Lucy Foley
Would you recommend this book? If you like mysteries and you like Lucy Foley, I would recommend it.