Week 4 Check In

[Sheri]

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!

[Daniele]

Despite weather that was totally conducive to hibernating under a blanket with a hot beverage and a good book, it was a busy work week for me, so all I got through were two volumes that the Lions' Club book fair lady insist I take home:

Runaways Deluxe, Vol. 1 and Runaways Deluxe, Vol. 2, which I used to fill the Defense Against the Dark Arts: a book about good vs. evil and the Helga: a book that represents Hufflepuff values, respectively.

Then I tried to pick up a book I *should* love: The Poetry of Birds, but by page 12, it already felt like a slog. It's exceedingly rare that I DNF a book, so I'm a little stalled as to whether to push on, start a second book on the side, or just drop it entirely and move along.

QOTW: I have such odd reading habits that I find it hard to talk a lot about books. I often sidestep bestsellers and classics entirely, or I get around to them long after the hype has died down. I am faithful to few genres, and bounce around a lot, particularly when my choices are driven by a challenge, so I'm a little hard to follow :)

[Lynette]

Since I last commented I have finished
: Number One Chinese Restaurant It took me a bit to get into it, but I ended up enjoying it. Multiple POV's, and a debut book for anyone who needs those for Popsugar. I am trying to just use on for each book, but it was good to know I have options.

Fangirl I have wanted to read this for years! It was a fun read, and after enjoying Park and Eleanor last year, I looked for more of Rainbow Rowell's books. Which lead me to Carry On, my latest finish. It is the perfect follow up to Fangirl. Carry On was another multiple POV, but I used it for an author whose first and last names start with the same letter. Fangirl was a book about a hobby.

I am currently reading The Sun Is Also a Star. I am beginning to think that multiple POV books are everywhere! I started it because I saw it was going to be made into a movie, but I am really enjoying it.

QOTW
I don't have a set group of book people. Many of my friends are English teachers, so sometimes they will share what they are reading for fun, or what book they are trying to get on a class reading list. I read a few good books that way. I am trying to get a meet-up book club off the ground, but so far it has not been easy. The most well attended meeting was one where people choose books- then they never came to the meetings to talk about them! I have a list from that, and I am changing the format to "just come and talk about books!". We will see how that goes.

[Jessica]

This week my main read/audiobook was:

Beyond Belief: My Secret Life Inside Scientology and My Harrowing Escape Which was a very interesting memoir about a religion I knew very little about. The woman who wrote it was raised almost from birth as part of their clergy, a very closed group, and is the niece of the group's current leader. I find it really interesting to read about people who lived in closed societies and their experiences and views.

I often find re-reading a familiar book before bed helps me sleep. This week it was:
Battle Magic Which I wasn't a huge fan of when it first came out and so I hadn't re-read it for a long time. I found myself enjoying it much more this time, maybe because my expectations were low.

I'm also making progress on my German book:
Heidi Which my grandmother read to me when I was a kid and so I have a vague memory of the story in English but not exact lines. So it's interesting to read in German and remember what happens. Progress is slow but I'm getting there, it's also challenging because while it is a kids book, it is fairly old so some of the language used in it is not common anymore and I'm constantly looking up words. (Similar to if you gave Alice in Wonderland to someone learning English as an adult)

And I'm working through the book club book as well
The Left Hand of Darkness

[Kathy]

This week I read What Alice Forgot for my real life book club, and was excited that I actually liked it despite it not being something I would normally read. I guess that's what's supposed to happen in book clubs.
I also finished and really enjoyed the first Chronicles of St. Mary's book, which I picked after seeing another FoE post several books from the series on her 2018 reading list. Excited because there are 8 more! Time-traveling historians.
QOTW
I joined a real life book club about six months ago, and it doesn't seem like my reading tastes match most of theirs. I am trying to get them more interested in mystery, fantasy, and sci-fi. I have one good friend that also reads a lot, so we occasionally have suggestions for each other. My mom and I have a few authors we like in common so we make sure we know when their latest books are out.

[Stephanie]

Hello All!

A late post this week as last week was crazy busy at work and I spent the entire weekend priming and painting two rooms in our old house. But, I did manage to do some physical reading, and I burned through some audiobooks.

For physical reading, I finished The Left Hand of Darkness and will be adding my thoughts to the discussion boards this week as I get a chance. I want to thank those of you who have contributed to the discussion so far--I look forward to talking about book in more detail with you (and future readers)! Overall, I quite liked this book and could see myself giving it a re-read in the future .

I'm currently reading Career of Evil, which the third book in Galbraith/J.K Rowling's Cormoran Strike series. I generally don't like mysteries at all, but I picked up the first book in this series for the 2017 "female author with a male pseudonym" and really like it, so I've been slowly making my way through the series. Last year I read the second book for the sequel prompt, and now that I'm not doing a challenge, I figured I'd get caught up on the rest of the series. I'm not quite enjoying this one as much as the others, but I give the author props for writing a good mystery: I'm 65% of the way through and the book actually has short sections narrated by the murderer, and I still have absolutely no idea who he or she is!

For audio books, I finished listening to Anansi Boys. What can I say? It's Neil Gaiman and I loved it. I was a bit disappointed when I realized he wasn't the narrator, but once I realized that would have been (a) culturally insensitive and (b) how amazing the narrator who did read it was, it wasn't hard to let that go. The narrator of the book was outstanding. This was a bit longer of a book than I usually choose to listen to, but I would 100% recommend it.

Finally, I spent the weekend listening to A Wrinkle in Time while painting. I last read this book probably 30 years ago, and so barely remembered anything about it. It's been on my radar since the movie adaption came out a few years ago, and since I've been wanting to read more female sci-fi authors, it seemed like a great choice. It was really nice to revisit this old friend. I don't think I ever read beyond this book, so I'm going to keep a look out for some of the sequels at my local library and see if I can make my way through the rest of the books. The version I listened to also had an intro from Ava Duverney, who directed the recent version, a short intro from L'engle herself, and an afterword by one of L'engle's granddaughters, all of which made this listening experience richer, in my opinion.

QOTW: I work in a university and my office is in the biggest library on campus, so there are always lots of people to talk to about books around. I often chat with my coworkers and some of the librarians about books over lunch or just in passing. For example, I had had Station Eleven on my TBR pile for a couple of years, but in December one of my colleagues told me about this great book she was reading, which turned out to be Station Eleven, so I read it as soon as I could so we could talk about it. When I read Middlesex last year for the LGBQ+ prompt, I raved about it at work, and another colleague put it on her TBR list and just told me this morning that she helped persuade her book club to make it her next read, so we'll be chatting about that for the next read. Many of us in the office regularly exchange book recommendations, as well.

And, as Sheri mentioned, we talk about books frequently through messenger, but it's become a point of humour between us that we rarely like the same books. The fact that we both recently read Station Eleven and liked it may be something of a minor miracle, heh. But it's always great to have other opinions to make you really think about why you like/dislike certain books or characters!

[Jennifer]

For week 4 I read a bit more of The Left Hand of Darkness. It's been slow going not because of the book, but because I have been sidelined from most of my regular activities by a cold? second round of bronchitis? mystery respiratory infection that doesn't want to leave? Whatever it is, I've been using what energy I have for kids and making tea.

However, my library ebook is due back tomorrow, so I should probably pick up the pace a bit. Fortunately my brain is clearer so maybe I can accomplish that as I'm about half-way through.

QOTW:
I used to belong to what started as a really awesome book club. One of the main rules when we started was that we save most of our personal chit chat (and there was a lot) for after the book discussion. Over time, that flip-flopped and fewer people were even reading the books. So, when I changed to a second-shift job, I stopped going. I haven't really had anyone to talk about books with since then. But I had two kids in fairly quick succession after that, so I wasn't reading as much as I wanted anyway. I'm glad to have this group to talk books with again!

[Jen W.]

Let's see, this week I read a lot of manga.

I finished off the Frau Faust series by Kore Yamazaki (Frau Faust, Vol. 1, Frau Faust, Vol. 2, Frau Faust, Vol. 3, Frau Faust, Vol. 4, Frau Faust, Vol. 5) This is a fun alt-history re-imagining of the story of Faust, where instead of Doctor Johann Faust, we have Doctor Johanna Faust. I enjoyed it, and the art is gorgeous. It's also something I don't see a whole lot of in manga: an older female main protagonist. Granted, she's immortal, but she starts the story at a physical age of at least mid-thirties.

I also read Wotakoi: Love is Hard for Otaku 3, which is a fun romantic comedy about twenty-something nerds in Tokyo trying to balance work, hobbies, and love.

I'm still working on In Other Lands. It's a kind of rambly story without a solid plot, per se, but I'm enjoying the characters.

QOTW:
Mostly I talk about books with my partner, but he primarily reads via audio, so I'm usually a quicker reader than he is. I have an old online friend group I talk about books with (we all met on an Misty Lackey email list back in the day and still keep in touch).

I used to be an admin for an online book club that started on LiveJournal and moved over here to GR after LJ started to self-destruct. We never really fully got back into the swing of things after the move, which was a shame because we had some good discussions and read a lot of fun books. We were called Book Club Fiction, the idea being that we would rotate through various fiction genres each month (i.e. one month would be fantasy, the next might be mystery, and so on, plus we had one "free-for-all" anything goes category in the line-up). People would nominate up to three books that fit the genre, and then everyone in the club would vote and we would select the top two vote-getters for next month. What I loved about it was it got me reading outside my normal genres and trying things I wouldn't otherwise have tried.

I was happy to find so many book lovers in FoE, because you guys are now my book people. <3

[Susan]

This has been a bit of a slow week for me. While waiting for the FoE book to come in, I have been reading Math with Bad Drawings. I bought two copies at Christmas. It was recommended by my niece who is a high school science teacher, as a gift to her teenage son. I got a second copy as a gift for my husband because it sounded so interesting.

The funny thing is that two of my 20-something adult kids sat there Christmas morning and both finished the books too! They loved it.

I just got the FoE book the other day and I've only gotten to the introduction, but I hope to start really reading it soon.

QOTW: I've gotten SO MANY books on my TBR list from FoE discussions on FB and here. I've had a decent overlap with Stephanie's recommendations. Or at least there's sufficient detail for me to research further.

I tend to read a bunch of non-fiction and then read mindless romance or general fiction for a bit in between, so I love having books at the ready.

[Marina]

Hello!

This week, I finished reading Harry Potter and the Methods of Rationality, if we're allowed to count fanfic =) Not my favourite, but pretty good, and an interesting extension to the HP world in some ways.

I also finished All the Birds in the Sky. I picked this up without knowing anything about it, and really enjoyed it. It's a near future magic v science sort of story, but is really more about misfits trying to figure out their place in the world and what they mean to each other. Not too heavy (aside from the end of the world backdrop), kind of charming and nice.

QOTW: I read quite a lot, but don't often talk about books for some reason. I used to be in a book club, but that wound down quite a few years ago, and I've not joined another since. I talk books with my boyfriend, but we're not often reading the same things at the same time, so that limits the conversation to avoid spoilers in a lot of cases. Other than that, I'll occasionally swap recommendations with friends, but don't really have in depth conversations about books or reading. I'll try to start again here!

[Sara]

Hello! Slow week for me - last week I finished listening to Winter. I LOVED this series. LOVED IT. Usually by book #4, I need a break or I'm over it, but not with this one. I started listening to Stars Above, which is a collection of stories from characters in the Lunar universe, but it was too soon after finishing Winter. I just wanted to enjoy the end of the series.

I only have 30 pages left of Everybody Lies: Big Data, New Data, and What the Internet Can Tell Us About Who We Really Are. I'm sorry to say it's starting to be a slog for me. I'll give my full opinion when I finish, hopefully at next week's check in.