Stina’s Comments (group member since Dec 11, 2016)

Stina’s comments from the Challenges from Exploding Steamboats group.

It was really hard to find lists of only 10 top books for the year, at least until the booktubers got to posting. I did decide on The Murmur of Bees, which I believe was on Audible's top ten list.

Lots of people have listed these books as childhood faves. I'm game.

I took this to mean a single-author collection of short pieces, not necessarily a "complete works" tome. I went with Swords and Deviltry which collects three Fafhrd and the Grey Mouser stories. They weren't the first three by original publication date, but the first is Fafhrd alone, the second is the Grey Mouser alone, and the third is their meeting, so it makes sense to call it the first in the series.

The instructions for this were to roll dice to determine your random number and then find a book with that number in the title. I think they specified 2d6, but I rebelled and rolled a d10 or a d12, I forget which. I got a 2. So I can double-dip with A Tale of Two Cities if I need to, but I have had 2 A.M. at The Cat's Pajamas on my shelves for a while and want to read that.

Ah, the '80s! Neuromancer, perhaps?

My mom has mentioned A Tale of Two Cities as her favorite book, and it's a book club pick this month, so I'm doing that.

Let's see if I can slam through Sue Grafton's U, V, W, X, and Y books this year! Or I could make it a Murderbot year after the new *novel* comes out. Squee!

In the original challenge, it was strongly implied that this should be via the on-site friends' recommendations feature. I think https://www.goodreads.com/recommendat... is a shortcut to this list. I've noticed this feature hasn't been pushed by the site as much as it was a few years ago, so if your list is kinda sparse, just pull something from your updates feed.

There's a really good description of this genre here: https://litrpgreads.com/what-is-litrpg

I somehow wound up with two copies of Warcross, so I might read that, but I'm also tempted by Space Opera Insertion, which I picked up at Mile Hi Con last fall.

I'm thinking Geek Love for this one. So far it's bizarre but good.

I have The Semester of Our Discontent lined up for this. What college/uni-setting books have you enjoyed?

I will probably read Dust Tracks on a Road or a mystery featuring a forensic anthropologist.

What belongs to South East Asia? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Southea...

I think The Sea Is Ours: Tales from Steampunk Southeast Asia fits the spirit of the prompt, but I will probably read The Question of Red, which is by an Indonesian author.

This prompt lends itself to pretty broad interpretations. My husband has been after me to read this book on building living trusts, so I'll try to do that.

So, what is "own voices"? It means the author is a member of the marginalized community represented by the book's protagonist. Thus begins the discussion of what "marginalized" means. Have fun with that.

I have a copy of The Whale Rider waiting for me at the library. I was surprised at how hard it was to track down a copy of that!

I was going to use The Murmur of Bees for this, but as I'm reading it, I don't think it counts as #ownvoices. Actually, I'm finding it very difficult to pay attention to it enough to tell. It's that kind of beautiful prose that just puts me to sleep because nothing ever seems to actually happen.

So, what is "own voices"? It means the author is a member of the marginalized community represented by the book's protagonist. Thus begins the discussion of what "marginalized" means. Some declare all women marginalized no matter where they are, and that makes a certain amount of sense, but it opens the debate up to ridiculous comparisons. I mean, I loved Red Glass, but I would not call it an #ownvoices book.

(Just the day, not the year.) Yeah, this one is going to be a huge pain for a lot of people. I just happened to find one on my shelves (The Silkworm), but many (most?) books don't list the full date of publication, just the month and year or (more commonly, I suspect) just the year. Sometimes Goodreads is helpful with this, but there is also a LOT of bad data on this site. You can also comb through old publishing blogs or websites of favorite authors for release announcements. It's slow, but so is everything else. If you do find a good resource, please share it here.

The obvious choice for me is Bridget Jones's Diary, which I've been trying to get through for a few years now. I expected this to be light and breezy, but it's really kind of dark and depressing. If I DNF it, what do you recommend?

In the interests of getting moving on book club reads for this month, I went ahead and borrowed Fry Bread: A Native American Family Story by Kevin Noble Maillard. It's a beautiful children's book that also includes notes on the background of fry bread as a symbol of resilience.

Mine is Animals Make Us Human: Creating the Best Life for Animals, which I added when I first joined the site nearly 10 years ago. I probably have read it all, but I tend to skip around in it every time I pick it up, so it's hard to say.