EPBOT Readers discussion

Hello Everyone,

I am getting this out there mostly on time! I am visiting and helping my 96 YO mother who was in the hospital the last 9 days. Today she finally moved to rehab to regain her strength. Please send all positive thoughts. But today was a step forward.

I have one finish listening to, Book Lovers. I had a long drive alone to get here and got a lot of time to listen to it. This book has high ratings so I am in the minority who didn't love it. For me it was about 2.5 stars, I rounded up to 3 but it was mostly meh. Really it went back and forth between being interesting and engaging, and annoying me. It was a sister story more than a romance novel. I have two sisters and ugh, for the book's sister dynamic.

I'm still reading The Women of Arlington Hall on my Kindle. I'm enjoying it but it is feeling possibly predictable. We'll see if I'm right by the end.

I now started listening to The Secret Life of Bees. This is next month's neighborhood book club choice. I read it before but it was very long ago and long before GoodReads or any tracking of my reading.

QOTW:
Do you use bookmarks? Where did you get them? What are your favorites?

Obviously only for physical books and they're more scarce for me as I spend more time reading on my kindle and audiobooks. But I do have some favorites. One was a mother's day poem from my daughter, probably when she was 6 (she's now 30 and a mother herself). The poem is printed, then she wrote her name and covered nearly the entire thing in smiley face stickers. It is so cute and I love it still.

I have some that are interesting, like a very thin slice of wood with a burned in symbol from some place we visited. My husband brought back a packet of 6 from a business trip to Japan that are really pretty too.

Hope your mom continues to improve!

Marble Hall Murders - Third and seemingly final book in the now-trilogy of modern mysteries with classic-style mysteries embedded inside. The first was so clever that when he wrote the second I was like, "How can he keep doing this?" The answer this time around is "by taking a bit of a shortcut," but it was still very entertaining and worth the read. Apparently he wrote it because the person playing the lead in the TV adaptations wanted to do another one, so good for her.

QOTW: I usually just use the hold slips that come in the library books because, you know, they're there. Unfortunately I find that most fancier bookmarks don't work well: they are often too thick, so the book doesn't close properly, and the clip-on ones bend the page. I do have a couple that are just printed card stock from the library - sometimes they shove them in the holds, and they give them out at the Pride parade, so I just got a new one today. I tend to use those for my nightstand rereads.

Finished up the Chaotic Orbits trilogy, by Beth Revis, this weekend. (Was particularly excited to find the audiobook available in Libby when I was looking for something for a weekend road trip.) Space heist/flirtation many would enjoy as I did. They are also all short, which sometimes is welcome when you want a quick read.
I had really liked This Is How You Lose the Time War, so was disappointed in The River Has Roots. Kindof grim adult fairy tale, more literary than I need.
Although I'm now retired from school PTOs, I found The Grimoire Grammar School Parent Teacher Association to be pretty hilarious. What goes on in the parent/teacher association at a school for supernatural students? Same stuff as everywhere else. Did that kid really do their science project themselves?
QOTW: all those alignment charts? I'm almost always lawful good except for bookmarks. I'm chaotic evil, dog-ear person. Even on brand-new books.