Sheri’s Comments (group member since Jul 25, 2016)

Sheri’s comments from the EPBOT Readers group.

Stephanie,

I get it. I'm actually a fan of Amanda Palmer and i'm still kind of "I still have 2 more hours left? sigh" . But I need it for a prompt, and since I just have it on in the background I'm soldiering through.

It feels more like someone just rambling more about their life than a coherent narrative, really. Like she's mentioned Neil so many times in every section, I have no idea what time in her life they actually met.

Hi Everyone!

Sorry for the late post, it's certainly been a week.

This week I finished:

Cat's Eye - I can't remember if I finished this before or after check in last week. It was pretty good, if a bit hard to read. It's the first of two books with the same title for popsugar.

The Sun Is Also a Star - This was cute, a light fun read. It's my book becoming a movie this year, and ATY's book with an astrological term in the title.

Circe - I loved this so much! I really like stories that are twists on fairy tales or myths. It's my popsugar mythology prompt, as well as the reading women one. For ATY it'll be my book with a name in the title.

Kindred: A Graphic Novel Adaptation - My book & brew read the proper novel, i read that a few years ago though so I did the graphic novel for a refresher. Still good, i liked the book better.

Giant Days, Vol. 1, Giant Days, Vol. 2, Giant Days, Vol. 3, Giant Days, Vol. 4, Giant Days, Vol. 5, Giant Days, Vol. 6, Giant Days: Extra Credit - Kinda fell down a hole here, haha. I still have two left to finish up, but I'm counting it as the book set in a university.

Currently reading:

Ball Lightning - I like this so far, the author is keeping the science just dumbed down enough that I don't feel totally lost haha. I think i'll use it for ATY's STEM prompt. Don't think it fits anywhere else.

The Art of Asking; or, How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Let People Help
Still plugging away, this is the book by a musician.

QOTW:

Another question from Kathy:

Any favorite childhood library memories?

I do remember going to the library with my mom as a kid, but I don't really have specific library memories. At some point we stopped going, I think because in that era the internet wasn't really a thing and I think the interlibrary loan system was less robust. So once I had read through most the stuff I was interested in, it was slower and harder to figure out if other stuff was at other libraries, or when new stuff would come in. So I relied more on used book stores and just kind of getting piles from there and then dumping my read ones i didn't want to re-read back. Now I mostly use my digital library, which is fantastic.

Megan, I'll have to check out that Lilith's Brood. I've been meaning to read more Octavia Butler, particularly the parable ones. I've apparently been in a gender-exploring mood with my reading anyhow so sounds about right haha.

Hi everyone!

It's been pretty grey and gloomy and cold here, so looking forward to spring.

This week I finished:

Starless - Really liked this, i love her writing in general and this was another great example. She is great at creating mythologies. This one was also interesting in the exploration of gender and gender roles and how cultures shape them. I used it for Popsugar's book I meant to read last year and ATY's book over 500 pages.

Dress Codes for Small Towns - This was another good one, I enjoyed it more than I expected. It's mostly about being someone who's non-conforming in a small conservative town. I enjoyed how it was handled, rather than the main character being dying to leave, she was more trying to carve a place for herself, and thus others who also don't fit. I used it for popsugar's book with a an accessory on the cover, and ATY's book I stumbled on since I picked it up on a whim from a book perk deal.

Cat's Eye - this is the first of two books with the same title, for Popsugar. Not sure if it fits anywhere else really. I think I ended up liking it overall. Atwood is weird for me, I always struggle with whether or not I enjoy her, but I don't deny she always makes me feel something. In this case in the first third of the book or so, it made me feel and remember all the petty nastiness little girls do to each other. Once it moved past that part I was able to get through it a little easier. I still liked it overall, I think.

I also worked through a pile of comics, including getting caught up on Steven Universe.

Currently Reading:

The Sun Is Also a Star - this is my book becoming a movie this year for popsugar, and my book with an astronomical term in the title for ATY, as well as a love story/romance for Reading Women. I'm enjoying it so far.

The Art of Asking; or, How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Let People Help Still poking at this, I'm slow on audio books. i mostly listen while knitting/drawing, when my husband's playing video games. I like it ok, but you can tell she's not really a writer. It's very conversational, for all that it's a novel it's really like just listening to her tell a bunch of stories. With the same sort of conversational pitfalls where there's one thing and then it leads to a tangent and meanders around until it gets back to the point. But I do like having her music interspersed in it, and it's interesting overall.

QOTW: Another question from Kathy:

What are your criteria for purchasing books rather than getting them from the library? Any difference in criteria for buying ebooks vs paper?

This is a good question! Any more, my shelf space is at a premium. I don't like having to get rid of old books I love, so new ones need to be worthy to join them haha. If i'm going to buy a book, especially at full price, I needs to be one I know I'll love, either because I read it already and want it physically or it's an author I love so am reasonably certain it'll apply.

Digital books, I hate spending "print book" prices on a digital file. But I'm on a few book mailing lists, so if I see one under $5 and it looks interesting I'll buy it. I've also bought a number of humble bundles, as long as I was reasonably sure I'd like a couple of the books I just get them.

Anything else I get from the library, preferably digitally so I don't have to mess with actually getting over there and remembering to get the books back.

I ended up buying it digitally because it was removed from streaming and I found I still wanted to sit and watch it.

I think maybe it started back in college, my knees went out when I was on a trip to New York. While everyone else went out bar hopping, I was in way too much pain to do any further walking and we had another day of the trip still. So I laid in the bunk at the ymc and legally watched it that evening. And then the next day after another full day of walking on agonizing knees, I did the same thing because it was on AGAIN. haha. So I just associate it with "watch Legally Blonde when you need things to be better"

Oh I do love Ever After, I'll totally watch that if I find it pop up on streaming or something.

Legally Blonde is my #1 go to, haha. I don't know why, I just love it so much.

Hi everyone!

Hope everyone is managing to stay warm. I'm in Michigan and it's about -14 right now, feels like -31. We've been told to keep our heat at 65 due to a gas fire at an energy plant, so things are a bit chilly, i'm huddling in blankets and on a heating pad to get by.

This week I finished:

The Blue Sword - ATY's Something Blue prompt. I never got into McKinley in my early fantasy days, I wish I had. She writes great fantasy with female protagonists.

Beauty and the Werewolf - a re-read just for fun

The Things I Would Tell You: British Muslim Women Write - this is for popsugar's celebrity I admire, emma watson's book club. As well as reading women's book featuring a religion not your own. I wanted to like this more than I did. I have trouble with collections sometimes, because they just jump all over. This was a particularly bad example of it. It had essays, short stories, an excerpt from a play, poetry, it just was all over. I had trouble getting into a groove because there just wasn't an overlying theme other than they were British Muslim women. Nothing was awful, it just was hard to really read as a book. but the other book I was reading at the time needed too much attention to keep pulling away from it to just read one or two entries at a time.

currently reading:

Starless - this will be my popsugar book I meant to read last year, and ATY's book that is over 500 pages. I'm really liking it, about half through. Not quite as amazing as her Terra De Ange books, but still pretty solid. Also I think it's a stand alone which is kind of nice.

The Art of Asking; or, How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Let People Help This will be my popsugar book written by a musician. It's the audio book, read by Amanda and features her music in between chapters so it's pretty cool. The intro said a pdf with pictures should accompany the audio book, but it's a library loan so I don't know how I'd access that. Libby isn't showing anything as I read. I have some mixed feelings about Amanda Palmer in general, but I do enjoy her music and she puts on a good show.

QOTW:

Kathy sent in some great ideas for questions, so I'm going to pull from one of them this week.

Do you re-read books? Do you have the same criteria for watching movies?

I re-read books all the time. Sometimes if I'm stressed I just want to sink down into an old favorite. Other times I just have been reading too much new stuff, especially if it's heavy stuff, and I want to take a break. Other times something will remind me of a story and i have to go re-read it.

Movies is a little harder because I don't own as many movies as I might want to re-watch, and i tend to be lazy about putting in dvds. So there's a few movies reliably on streaming that i just watch a ton. Especially if I just want some background for drawing or crafting and don't want to focus on a new movie.

Hi everyone!

Hope the reading is going well!

As a reminder, Stephanie has set up some threads for discussing The Left Hand of Darkness, for those participating in the book club. There's some good discussion going in the pre-reading/first five chapters threads!

This week I finished:

The Left Hand of Darkness - I'd read this a few years ago, but didn't remember much. It was good to revisit and think more critically about it.

Faith, Volume 1: Hollywood & Vine - cute comic, will probably continue with more

The Life of Captain Marvel - fun book on captain marvel, changes up her origin a bit. Not really the events, but the context. I hope some of it makes it into the movie, but not holding out for it. I think the movie will still be good though.

The Marrow Thieves - read this for popsugar's own voices, as well as aty's indigenous person prompt, and reading women's indigenous woman author. I appreciated the book, and the importance of it's message, it was well written, but I didn't really enjoy it. I found the main character be...such a teenage boy haha. Which is accurate, but I didn't really connect.

Dead Beat - finally finished this up

Introducing Teddy: A Gentle Story About Gender and Friendship - This was my Read Harder children's book that won a diversity award since 2009. It won a lgbtq+ award. It was a sweet, if simple, story with charming artwork.

Meddling Kids - Popsugar's amateur detective prompt. I really wanted to enjoy this more than I did. It was sort of Scoobie- Doo meets Evil Dead/Lovecraft. The concept was really cool, but it fell short in execution. It felt like the author couldn't decide if he wanted to write a horror story, or horror-comedy/satire. It wasn't quite funny or zany enough, but was too weird to really be taken seriously. Also he kept breaking into play-like dialogue format for no apparent reason. Some dialogue would be normal, and then suddenly it'd be all CHARACTER NAME: "says something!". There was also some 4th wall breaking, which would have worked better if it were consistent, but only happening once or twice just felt weird. Also the main relationship in the book felt off. It felt very "friend-zoned" friend just lurking around until the object of their affection gives in.

Currently Reading:

The Blue Sword - ATY's something blue. I'm enjoying this so far, it's the companion novel to The Hero and the Crown that I enjoyed a while back.

QOTW:

Do you have particular people who are your book people?

I'm lucky that I have several friends who are readers, so I can talk about books and get recommendations. Stephanie and I talk about books a lot, as well, though our tastes are often drastically different!

My favorite parties are ones where I find a fellow book lover and we fall down a rabbit hole of book discussions.

Of course I like talking about books here too!

Ok, I had a migraine the last couple of days so I was having trouble gathering my thoughts. Now that I'm feeling a bit better I'll have a go.

The journey across the ice served, to me, as a way to break the characters down to their fundamental selves. There was no room for pretense, manners, prevaricating, or any other sort of social niceties to hide their true selves, when every day was a bad slip or accident away from death. That allowed them to get over their preconceived notions and prejudices and come to admire each other's strengths and see their weaknesses. Estraven had the methodical planning and one foot after another mentality to get them through, without focusing on things that COULD go wrong. He was also more stolid,
and less given to optimism or great feats of imagination. Genly had more brute strength, and more extreme emotions both in positive determination and negative despair. He was also far more susceptible to the elements.

The use of dark and light imagery serves to humanize the genthians I think, as Genly points out, nearly every culture has some form of ying and yang, light vs dark type of symbolism. Often it's seen more as a duality of people, male and female, a better half, a god vs devil. But when Genly asks whether they even have a concept of duality, Estraven points out that the duality exists in every Genthain. And really, when it comes to it, within ever person in terms of being capable of both good and evil. And even the Genthians require two for breeding, they cannot procreate alone. The journey through the ice emphasizes the NEED for duality, when the snow is so bright that there are no shadows, and they have trouble gaining balance and finding their way. Absolute brightness is just as hard to navigate as absolute darkness. I think the title is a nod to that concept, that the left hand of darkness is necessary to counter the right hand of light.

Ok, I think that's good for now. I had a lot of thoughts about the book, but I don't want to ramble too much alone!

I would say that both Genly and Estraven are becoming more reliable in the sense that they are realizing their own biases and working to overcome them. Their relationship and friendship is the catalyst, I think. Genly in particular really starts realizing how a lot of his problems came from not trusting Estraven due to failing to understand and accept the underlying differences between them. Estraven realizes that assuming Genly understood the customs of Genthians further caused a rift of mistrust, as they continually sent the wrong signals to each other.

It really does point out how language isn't always enough. Simply sharing words doesn't lead to communication if a person has no grasp of the other's body language, and cultural ways of understanding and operating. It's similar how a human seeing a primate might naturally smile, due to them being cute or seeming friendly. However to primates, baring teeth is a sign of aggression, so one's friendly gesture turns into a threat.

As far as the plan goes, it probably was very foolish, yet as Genly states, he'd rather die trying to do something than remain in captivity dying a slower and more painful death.

I'll admit that while I love Ursula's writing in general, one of my peeves is changing POV without some indication that it happens beyond having to figure it out in context. Especially when it's first person so it's always "I, I, I".

That being said, I think it was very helpful to switch POV, so you start to see how a Gethenian sees a person who is is single-gendered, and how it comes off as strange and unnatural as Genry finds the Gethenians. It's not even gender at that point, it shows there's a deep difference in the way the two species think and consider things, and just how much misunderstanding there was between the two.

I have other things to say, but again since I finished the book I feel like a lot of my answers are too swayed by what I read later, I'll put more complete thoughts on the final discussion.

I think my favorite is Sacre Bleu, possibly because I’m an artist and I liked the whole concept. I did read those both but they’re not my favorites. I really liked Fluke too. I think I’m going to read Serpent of Venice for one of my challenge prompts later this year :)

I love Christopher Moore too! Picked him up on aw whim ages ago because I thought Bloodsucking Fiends: A Romance was the best title haha

Stephanie - without giving anything away, the title becomes much clearer later on in the book :)

I don’t want to say too much more, now that I finished again, what I read is influencing what I feel about the beginning.

Ohhh how did I leave Seanan McGuire off my list, she's certainly up there. I love her writing, also her books as Mira Grant.

I find it interesting that our initial introduction into the world is through the eyes of a man that readers would consider "normal", someone of one gender who is from a world where there are males and females. In his mind you see him assigning genders to people it's rather pointless to assign them to, since the designations are meaningless when they're not in kemmer. In his mind, he even admits that the reason he might not like Estraven is that he sees Estraven as a man, one of power, and it's feminine mannerisms that set him on edge. He also thinks of the person running his lodging as a woman, and is caught by surprise when they say they have only ever sired children, not borne them.

I feel like that sums up how a lot of people see gender, even today. They get uncomfortable seeing men in make up and dressed flamboyantly, women with short hair and no make up and dressed in a non-feminine way. Even a lot of supposedly progressive people only accept trans people who fully perform their chosen gender identity. So a trans woman is only ok if she preforms hyper femininity, trans men if they're hyper masculine. And a lot of people are still deeply confused by people who designate themselves as non binary or fluid.

Although I will say today there's at least a lot more open knowledge and resources for people to educate themselves, unlike the late 60's when she was writing this.

It's like she says in her introduction, sci fi writers aren't predicting the future, they write what they see and experience themselves.

Cindy, I don't think it is. I remember seeing her name in the sci-fi section when I was younger, but back then I had a limited book budget so I tended to find an author I like and just plow through their entire catalogue. And for some reason I wasn't going to the library. I guess because my mom didn't so I didn't tag along? And then wasn't in the habit as I got old enough to drive. Anyhow, I only started reading her a couple years ago, as I was trying to get through more sci-fi classics.

Hi Everyone!

Week three already! Winter is always weird in that it doesn't feel like January's already half over, yet I just want spring to get here already.

In case people didn't see the email, the book selected for our next book club read is The Left Hand of Darkness, and Stephanie has volunteered to lead the discussion. There's a thread for pre-reading thoughts, as well as threads for different chunks of the book so you can discuss as you read, if you like. Hope to see people joining in!

This week I finished:

Into the Drowning Deep - I really loved this. I like science fiction meeting fantasy, so a science fiction book about mermaids was right up my alley. I used it for popsugar's book about an extinct or imaginary creature, and ATY's book about a monsterous creature.

Spider-Man: Miles Morales, Vol. 1, Spider-Man: Miles Morales, Vol. 2 - After seeing into the spiderverse and loving it, i decided to read some of Miles' arc. I read Spider Gwen and Gwenpool, and he's showed up in those, but I hadn't ever checked out his solo stuff. I liked vol 1 a lot, vol 2 unfortunately had the civil war 2 nonsense in it, which was just a disaster mess across the board and infected pretty much all marvel titles of that time. Hopefully vol 3 on will be past it.

The Seven Deaths of Evelyn Hardcastle - This was a meh book for me. It's the Popsugar group read for January, for a book centered around a game or puzzle. I thought I'd really like it, but it was pretty disappointing. I didn't like the main character, and I thought it was overly convoluted. It felt like the author was just really pleased with himself with how complicated and clever he was, but I've read a lot of other break the loop/cycle, figure out what's going on works that did it in a more interesting way.

Station Eleven - Counting this for Popsugar's book I'd like to see made a movie, and ATY's book with a dual timeline. I really loved this! Lately I've been kind of put off of reading too much post-apocolyptic/dystopian fiction just with...the world being what it is right now. However this really managed to keep a tone of "things are bad, very bad, but we'll pull through". I really liked the dual timeline aspect as well, the before and after.

Currently reading:

The Left Hand of Darkness - I read this a few years ago, but I want to refresh my memory for the group discussions.

Blood Rites - Still poking away at this, I'll finish it some day haha.

QOTW:

Do you have a favorite author? I think we've discussed books we love, but how about authors?

I'd say Mercedes Lackey is still up there. I don't love a lot of her newer stuff she's written, but I still adore her older work. She's who I turn to when i'm having a bad day and just need a comfort read to get me through. Several of my paperbacks of my particular favorites have pages that fall out when I read, due to how often I've read them. I have a soft spot for Anne McCaffery because she was my intro into more adult science fiction and fantasy, with her Harper Hall books. Those were still YA, but through those I found her other adult sci-fi. I also love Neal Stephanson for his oh so meaty tomes full of info dumps and geeky humor.

I'm excited to revisit this! A lot of times in my excitement to find what happens, I rush through books quickly the first time through. That means I don't always retain it as well as I'd like. I'm a big fan of re-reading so I can unearth new things I missed the first time around, or see the bigger picture once I know where it eventually ends up. I've only read LHoD once, so I know there's plenty more to dig through.

I think that while it'll be topical in the sense of exploring gender, since the idea of gender as a spectrum is becoming more widely known/accepted/talked about. However I think the sci-fi setting keeps it distant enough that it doesn't have the same gut-twisting sense of impending doom that some stuff, like The Handmaiden's Tale, gives when you read it right now.

Daisy, glad you liked Jonathan Strange and Mr Norell, I found that door stopper to be a chore! However there was a miniseries, I think by BBC that was actually quite good. It fixed most the complaints I had with it. It at least used to be on Netflix in the US.

Also Monstess is so good! Beautiful and well written.