Week 17 Check In

[Sheri]

Hi everyone!

Hope everyone's holding up ok.

Been a rough week, annoying stuff at work and just generally getting sick of all this. I'm something of a homebody, but i'm used to getting out for exercises classes, gym, book club, friend visits, etc. Also had planned on several small trips this year. Been a bummer realizing that basically everything this year is cancelled, even if it doesn't 'officially' get cancelled. (I don't think i'm going to be risking air travel or cons for a while, even if they are still happening, dubious about the one concert I have tickets to in September). I realize I have it pretty good, compared to a lot of people, but still bummed.

This week I've finished:

Horrorstör- read harder horror novel from an indie press, popsugar book you picked up because of the title. I picked it up because i was amused at the concept of a horrifying ikea-clone. It was actually more intense and creepy than I expected, although I did enjoy it still. Horror's not my favorite genre, but i think it managed to stay just whimsical enough I could do it.

The Ten Thousand Doors of January - popsugar book published in my birth month (September). I liked this a lot. I am a big fan of portal fiction, i like the concept of adventurers that seek doors. I thought it had some cool ideas in terms of doors and their functions. A bit reminiscent of The Starless Sea.

Currently Reading:

Space Opera - getting started on this so I can get some questions going! Might use it for great opening line for popsugar, haven't decided yet. "Once upon a time on a small, watery, excitable planet called Earth, in a small, watery, excitable country called Italy, a soft-spoken, rather nice-looking gentleman by the name of Enrico Fermi was born into a family so overprotective that he felt compelled to invent the atomic bomb." Feels like it's setting the tone, even if it's too wordy for a snappy quote. I'll have to think about it!

The Count of Monte Cristo - got past page 500! ...still not even half way.

So You Want to Talk About Race - listening on audio book. It's one of those books that i feel is important to read, but hard to say I "like" it or "enjoy" it.

QOTW:

I admit I'm at a loss for a question this week. If anyone has good ideas, feel free to message me! I'll borrow from Popsugar again:

Are there any authors that are instant-order/buy for you, without reading any descriptions or reviews?

I don't tend to immediately buy anything, just because my reading queue is backed up enough I know I won't get to it right away. So I usually wait for a library hold and/or buy on sale later. Unless I'm at a physical indie bookstore, and then I'll grab whatever is shiny to support it. Neil Gaiman, Neal Stephanson, WIlliam Gibson, and Seanan McGuire are all on the "if they wrote it, i'll probably grab it" category.

[Rebecca]

One of my projects this week was to make myself a profile picture. I tried to make a bookish version of what I use on other social media, but the trees have grown a lot since I took those! I'm tempted to get out the ladder and try again.

I finished The New Jim Crow: Mass Incarceration in the Age of Colorblindness. It got a little repetitive after a while. I'm also curious about how things have changed in the decade since it was written. There's been a popular movement regarding bias in criminal justice, and a new drug crisis that may have resulted in a shift in popular conceptions of drug users. It was still interesting, though.

After that, I needed a good old mystery, so I went back to Ngaio Marsh and read Died in the Wool. This was another one set in New Zealand (apparently our detective spent the whole war there doing counter-espionage), so that was nice. I like her descriptions of the various landscapes there. Otherwise this wasn't one of her better offerings; there was basically only one possible culprit.

I kept hearing about Magic for Liars, here and elsewhere, and finally decided to read it. It's very well written. I especially appreciated the author's providing the first-person narrator with a gift for apt but unexpected simile. There were a couple of things that kept it from being amazing for me, personally. The first is that I never got into Harry Potter. This book isn't really a parody, but perhaps an attempt at a clear-eyed re-imagining of what a school for magical adolescents might be. I think I would have gotten more out of that if I'd spent more time in another school for magical adolescents. Second, although there is indeed a murder to be solved, and it's clued about as well as it can be in an alternate universe (I put it together), this is less a classic mystery and more like a descendant of the hard-boiled detective genre. The detective needs money, takes a case that hits too close to home, drinks too much, gets involved with a suspect... If you like Harry Potter and private detectives, jump on this one.

Oh, I also read Frog and Toad Are Friends, because it was a free borrow from Hoopla and it made me smile. I'm totally a Toad.

QOTW: ...no? I rarely buy books, anyway. Generally when I purchase, it's in support of people I follow on the internet who've written a first book that sounds interesting to me. I guess if Agatha Christie were suddenly reincarnated I'd buy anything she wrote.

[Megan]

I know how you feel, Sheri - I really have come to enjoy being home, but we got the official word this week (we knew it was coming) that our cruise is cancelled for June, and as events later and later into the summer announce cancellations, it's sinking in how long this is going to be going on.

I had a much better reading week than last week - I finished The Revenge of Magic, which was great - I can't wait to read the rest of the series. It's like Percy Jackson, but better.

When I finished that, my loan for MatchUp finally came in for IRL Book Club #2. It was a lot of fun, even the authors whose characters I wasn't familiar with previously. I especially liked the Rambo/Liz Sansborough mashup, and I haven't read any of Jeffrey Tolliver series, but I definitely will after the story he's in here. This is a good one for anyone who's having trouble focusing on long books right now - all of the stories are action-packed and short.

Next up was The Power of One for IRL Book Club #1 - I remember when the book, and then the movie, came out, thinking that it was gross that anyone would want to read about white people in South Africa. But one of the book club folks said that it is her favorite book, which intrigued me enough to vote for it. I read what I thought was the entire book on Libby in a day - I couldn't put it down - then realized at the end that it was the young readers' edition, so it ended several chapters before the full version. I immediately tracked down the full version online, and stayed up half the night skimming through the chapters in both books for the differences (mostly degree of detail on violence and deaths and description of male body parts), then read the last few chapters. It's hard to describe exactly what makes it so amazing - there aren't many elements that you can't find independently elsewhere - but it's the way the whole thing comes together, and how Peekay feels real at every age. At the end of the full version, I found out there is a sequel, but I'm going to wait a little while before jumping into that to give myself time to recover.

I wasn't sure what to read after that, since I knew it was unlikely anything would compare, so I randomly picked one from my TBR and read The Heaven Makers, since it was fairly short. It was fine - nothing groundbreaking, a standard, middle of the road alien scifi story - but it was a hard transition from the immersion of the Power of One, so I feel like I would have appreciated it more reading it in a different context.

I'm reading one now that has been recommended to me by many people - Across the Universe. I'm about 25% into it, and I still feel like I'm waiting for the real story to get started. So far it feels like a YA dystopian version of Wall-E, which is a hard image to shake once it's in your mind and makes it hard to take all the angst seriously. A while back when we talked about why we like or don't like YA, I think this is what the people who didn't like it were thinking of. I'm going to finish, of course, since that's what I do - but it isn't exactly hard to put down.

QOTW: Ben Aaronovitch and Jasper Fforde. I have alerts set on Forbidden Planet for when their autographed editions go on sale, and order them as soon as they're up, no questions asked. Other than that, I use the library, wait for deals, etc.

[Shel]

Hi! I had two finishes last week: Old Man's War for my other group, which was a re-read for me but it's been a long time. The group voted on the series after we finished the Robin Hobb books, and it's a TOTAL change of pace. I really like Scalzi's writing style - he has this really light-hearted snarky tone, and yet his books touch on fairly serious issues in a humorous way. I never continued the series after reading the first one years ago, so I'm looking forward to going on.

The other book I finished was more "meh". I'd downloaded The Queen's Poisoner as a free Kindle First book several years ago and never got around to reading it, so as I'm continuing to work my way through my kindle back catalog I decided it looked about right for the level of brainpower I have available. It was...okay. The writing was very much telling instead of showing, the plot was superficial, and the characters were one-dimensional. But it was interesting enough that I finished the book. I did like the device of having the story told through the POV of an 8-year-old boy, even if he didn't really seem like a realistic portrait of an 8-year-old boy (and I know that age VERY WELL, I have a third grade boy at home)!

Now I'm reading The Invisible Library, also for my other goodreads group. I'm about halfway through and loving it, so I'll definitely continue with the series!

QOTW: I mostly use the library for budgetary reasons, but must-buy authors for me are Neil Gaiman and Guy Gavriel Kay. Also Sam Kean and Mary Roach, for nonfiction.

[[deleted user]]

This week was meh, I've been laid low with a (non pandemic related) bug for a few days but didn't feel like reading.

In the last two weeks I finished Northanger Abbey, which I really enjoyed. Could have done with the ending being a little less rushed, but I'm okay with that.

I listened to The Sumage Solution on audiobook. The first full audiobook I've listened to in many years. I'd forgotten how much I enjoy it as a method of reading.
This one I won in a giveaway in Gail Carriger's newsletter and I've already grabbed the next in the series with the free audible credit I got from my trial. I loved it that much.

QOTW: I don't think there's any author I'd quite order without reading a summary/blurb. I don't count Jasper Fforde since most of the time I've already been lucky enough to hear previews at Fforde Ffiesta events. I'm also usually so far behind on books that I don't get to a point where my buying new books lines up with the release of new books. I do have authors who jump up the list though!

[Sarah]

Another week of compulsory laying low. Wait, you too???

Knocked off Oathbringer and am still riding the "finished an amazing book" high two days later. So much going on in this book and so many layers- all these little realizations of how small details connect to others and paint a richer picture of what's going on. Sooooo much fun!

Started back in on The Fellowship of the Ring. So I've got the joy of having my to favorite book series underway at the same time.

QOTW - Right now my instant buys and pre-orders are (obviously) Brandon Sanderson, plus Brent Weeks, the Sean Danker "Admiral" series, Scott Meyer, and the Firefly novels. The pre-orders are typically the Kindle version, which release drop at midnight on the US east coast, which conveniently means mid-evening the night BEFORE release in my time zone, which is a very happy thing when it's something I'm super excited for.

[Daniele]

Just one finish this week: Lord of the Flies, which I'd never read. Dragged in the middle but picked up nicely. Used it for the Hufflepuff/Greenhouses/set somewhere tropical prompt.

29/60

Still slowly making my way through The Dirt: Confessions of the World's Most Notorious Rock Band.

QOTW: Other than Neil Gaiman, I can't think of anyone else who's an automatic yes. Probably Jim Butcher, but I still have quite a bit of catching up to do.

[Jen W.]

This week I finished The Gentleman's Guide to Vice and Virtue, which I'm using for my Popsugar book with a map. I really enjoyed this book. It's more of a historical fantasy/adventure/romance, with hints of supernatural goings-on. I also finished The Gentleman’s Guide to Getting Lucky, which is a cute, funny novella about the main love interests from the first book.

I'm currently reading The Lady's Guide to Petticoats and Piracy, book 2 of the series and my Popsugar book with more than 20 letters in the title. So far it's a little slower going than the first book, but it's starting to pick up.

QOTW: I have a few auto-buys: Neil Gaiman, Jim Butcher, Seanan McGuire, Lois McMaster Bujold, Martha Wells. Leigh Bardugo is getting up there, too.