Sha’s Comments (group member since May 08, 2018)

Sha’s comments from the The Perks Of Being A Book Addict group.

The Magpie Lord

Nice Dragons Finish Last

Hazard

Find me a cover with a storm on it

Enter the Enchanted

Captive Prince

All Systems Red

Young Warriors: Stories of Strength

Tempests and Slaughter

Rivers of London

The Poppy War

List Each Series in A-Z order

A - Animorphs; The Invasion
B - The Books of the Raksura
C - Castle Glower; Tuesdays at the Castle
D - Discworld
E - Everworld
F - The Five Find-Outers
G - The Guild Codex: Spellbound
H - Her Royal Spyness
I - InCryptid
J
K - Kushiel's Legacy
L - Lockwood & Co.
M - Maiden Lane
N - No. 1 Ladies Detective Agency
O - October Daye
P - Penric and Desdemona
Q
R - Redwall
S - Sookie Stackhouse
T - Temeraire
U - Uncle Scrooge
V - Vorkosigan Saga
W - Wayward Children
X
Y
Z

Find me a cover with a monster

Mystify the Magician

I may have gone up to twelve books at a time at some point but it's usually about 4-7. The perils of mood reading.

Answers

1. Hngh. I'm very bad at picking favourites and also they keep changing so nothing makes sense. But I do have a bunch of auto buy authors, like T. Kingfisher, Brandon Sanderson, Sarah Rees Brennan, Tamora Pierce, K.J. Charles and Lois McMaster Bujold. There are more, actually. But I should probably stop.

2. Oh yes there are so many books I keep coming back to. All the Penric novellas, for example. Starting with Penric's Demon.

3. I'd like to clarify that this is not romantic love because that is not how my brain works, but I do routinely vibrate because of how much I'm in awe of X character. The last one I had strong positive feelings about was Shen Miao from The Rebirth of the Malicious Empress of Military Lineage.

Questions:
1. What are some of your favorite story themes or tropes? (a trope is a narrative theme or device reoccurring in stories like revenge plots, incognito characters, quest stories, enemies to lovers romance; basically anything that makes you go oh hey I think someone else used a similar idea)
2. What are some of your least favorite themes or tropes- things you actively try to avoid in stories.
3. Do you prefer your SFF/Mystery/Thriller with romance or without it?

Uhm I feel like I've stalled the thread with the question so I'm just going to change them.
New Questions:
1. Romance subplots in genre fiction- do you like them or would you rather not have them?
2. Do you have a favorite war story? If so, what is it.
3. What was the last tv show you found that you really liked?

Heh I mostly asked the cover question because I saw the cover to The Order of the Pure Moon Reflected in Water and immediately fell in love with it. You're definitely not getting any judgement from me.

Answers:

1. The last book to make me cry ugly tears was Grandmaster of Demonic Cultivation. It had a LOT of tropes and plot points I got very upset about and then I hyperfixated on it.

2. Hngh. To be honest, my favorite book probably changed every week? I just got constantly delighted every time I discovered a new type of story and obsessed about it for a while before moving on to the next one. They were always sci-fi/fantasy books, though.

3. Probably Terry Pratchett. I love a lot of authors but Pratchett was the first author while made me hold my breath about how good his writing was. Once I got the the later Discworld books, anyway.

Questions:
1. Fanfiction. Do you read it, do you have feelings about it?
2. Favourite romantic relationship(s) you've read?
3. Favorite platonic relationship(s) you've read?

Answers:

Caveat: I have a lot of favourite protagonists and they are my favorites for very different reasons so a single favorite is hard to pinpoint. So I'll just go with earliest favourites.

1. Favorite Hero: Jake from Animorphs, mostly because he has such an excellent character arc and also because his relationships with the rest of his team are fascinating. There's also something about the common narrative of "this guy is the protagonist because we said he's the special one" being subverted by the text and characters openly acknowledging the Hero is not the best at most things but is also the only one willing to shoulder the responsibility and the only one diplomatic enough to make a roster of strong-willed characters get along. And the hero winning the respect because of those qualities. Idek man I have a lot of feelings about Jake.

2. Favorite Heroine: Keladry of Mindelan from The Protector of the Small. When I first read her books, I firmly decided Kel was the person I wanted to be when I grew up. I am now grown up, and Kel is still the person I want to grow up to be. She's a normal no-superpowered warrior in a fantasy medieval kingdom, who gets through the day with sheer grit, unyeilding stubbornness and applied courtesy and kindness. God, I love her so much.

3. Immediate DNF: Okay so here's the thing- I picked up Prince of Thorns knowing it was a dark fantasy with many disturbing themes and a fairly unsympathetic protagonist. I knew this. Nothing about the edgelord 14 year old killing people and raping women in the establishing character shot was you know- a surprise. I've actively hunted down and read dark stories (featuring both murder and rape more graphic than the scenes in this one) on purpose.

None of that made a difference to my absolute ennui. It was not that everything was horrifying, it was that the horror crossed the line into hilariously over the top and simultaneously left me with zero positive feelings about the prose and characters. The book had some interesting worldbuilding I really wanted to get to, but I ended up dropping it in half a chapter flat instead.

Questions:
1. Best (non re-read) book you've read in the first half of 2020? What about it did you like?
2. Worst book you read in the first half of 2020 and why.
3. How important are book covers to you?

Answers:
1. Either super-speed or some form of time-freeze or time-reset/travel.
2. It's not a secret but I am very fond of the horrible chaotic psychopathic gremlin that is Xue Yang from Grandmaster of Demonic Cultivation.
3. Not that many, I think. I'm easily enthralled by shiny covers but I do mostly read ebooks so the cover is not as much a draw as it would be for physical books. So uh- ten ish?

Questions:
1. Name a story you like to read about but would definitely not want to be a part of.
2. Least favorite protagonist from a book you otherwise liked.
3. Has the pandemic affected your reading habits?

So this was a really fun group and I'm sorry I dropped the ball in April. Heh.

It was really nice getting to hang out with you guys. :)