Week 14 Check in

[Susan]

Hello everyone. I hope you all had a good week. Spring is here for us and last night my husband and I had our first evening fire of the season in our fire pit.

Thank you to @Jen for telling me that I had unintentional settings on my messages and then for sending me some QOTW. This week's question comes from her!

This week I'm still listening to The Lincoln Highway for my neighborhood book club. The meeting is in 10 days and I hope I finish it in time. The layout of the book is strange (but in a useful way) in that the chapters count down instead of up. So I have an idea about how much is left. The story is only okay for me so far.

This week I started reading The Wisteria Society of Lady Scoundrels. I think someone here read it and I added it to my TBR list. It is light and amusing. An easy bedtime read. I'm about halfway through it.

QOTW (from Jen):
Is there a book you read recently that you recommend to others just because you want to discuss it with someone else?

Yes, for me it is the one I recommended for this group's next book club pick about Elizabeth Packard. I had so many feelings when I read it. I am purposely not linking it here to lessen any influence for the vote. We chose it for our neighborhood book club and had great discussions. I just want to talk through the book and all the things I felt.

[Shel]

Last week I had just started Sea of Rust - I finished and loved it. I used it for the "off the beaten path" prompt because I've never read a robot apocalypse book before where they already killed all the humans. Robots with existential angst - fascinating!

I've now started The Night Bird, which was a free kindle first download that has been languishing unread on my kindle for several years. Trying to make a dent in that backlog, which is quite large!

I've been reading the Magic Bone series to my daughter, and we just finished book 3 Follow That Furball. They're kind of cute, but she's ready to move on to something different and so am I. Going to try to see if I can get her into The Secret Garden next, I think! And still working on The Serpent's Shadow with my son.

QOTW: Yes! The whole Books of Babel series. I finished the final book just a few months ago. They're not very well known and I just want to gush about them to everyone who likes steampunk. I'm dying to discuss the ending with someone so if any of you get there give me a shout :). The first book is Senlin Ascends.

[Jen W.]

I just have a few comic & manga finishes this week:
Chivalry - 5 stars
Snow White with the Red Hair, Vol. 18 - 4 stars
Something's Wrong With Us, Vol. 7 - 3 stars

I'm still reading Chilling Effect for the Popsugar Latinx author prompt, but almost done with it. I'm enjoying it so far. It's pretty clearly inspired by the Mass Effect video game series, to the point where I've noted a few jokes and nods. It's also making me want to replay Mass Effect, but I don't want to commit to that until after I get back from my vacation in May!)

QOTW: This is 100% me with Little Thieves. I actually raved about it so much, I got my partner to listen to the audiobook just so I could talk to him about it. The author is also an artist, and the artwork she's posted for the book were what initially got my notice. ( Round up thread of the art on Twitter, if anyone's interested: https://twitter.com/what_eats_owls/st... )

[Trystan]

finished Freedom™.
i'm reading The Three Musketeers (my own book) while i wait for something from the library XD

QotW: all. the. books! XD

[Sheri]

Hi all,

Thanks for making a post, Susan!

I put up a poll for the book club, it's here https://www.goodreads.com/poll/show/2...

Things are calming down a little bit, still busy but not quite as bad. Next week will be the real test to see how these meds are working as far as preventing my migraines, crossing fingers!

This week I read:

Arsenic and Adobo - read this for the popsugar discord book club, i just found this ok. I think i'm just not much of a cozy mystery fan. Always am vaguely miffed at the idea that some rando thinks they're better suited at solving a murder than someone trained at it, and this one had an added bonus at a supposed super detective who seemed to be making a lot of really wild assumptions based on a lot preconceived notions. There was also a lot of rom-com elements shoved in. I don't like love triangles in my rom coms or YA books, so having one in a cozy doesn't really make me like them more, nor does it make me want to read more books in the series to see it resolved.

The Wolf and the Woodsman - this reminded me a lot of Spinning Silver and the Bear and the Nightingale, although I didn't end up liking it quite as much as either. It was a little less fantastical and more grim. Still had fairy tale elements, but there was a lot more despair and death and a lot more "oh geeze is this really going to end like this?" So very well written, but it's not going to be one I really want to come back to later, most likely.

Currently reading:

Legends & Lattes - I'm guessing I got the same facebook ads that Jen did, I bought it around the same time that i saw it pop on her goodreads hahah. It's cute, I'm enjoying it. Although I am NOT a coffee fan, i think it's disgusting. So I'm somewhat rolling my eyes at how often people are loving inexpertly brewed black coffee at first sip, since even huge coffee fans admit it was an acquired taste and poorly brewed coffee can be bad. And most of them had to doctor it with a LOT of cream and sugar for a while before they worked their way up to enjoying it black. Still, i get it's a fantasy book and we're dealing with orcs and succubi here. Suppose we can imagine a magic world where coffee isn't gross too.

QOTW:

I try to, but a lot of the readers I know are way busier than I am, or are just as fickle/mood readery as I am. So I can recommend the books all I want but the chances of one of them actually READING it to talk to me about it in a timely enough fashion that I still remember what I wanted to talk about....

[Jen W.]

Sheri - Seanan McGuire was promoting Legends & Lattes over on Twitter. I had heard of it prior to that from other GR friends, but when she posted that she loved the book, it bumped it up on my TBR. :)

[Sheri]

Ah ok, that makes sense. I love her, but i don't twitter at all. I know she's a coffee fan from how much she writes it into her characters living on it though haha.

[Susan]

@sheri I hope you get the relief you need from the migraines. And I had to laugh at your coffee comments. I hate coffee too, but a good brew of black tea (with honey and cream) is my version of cozy.

I had added Legends & Lattes to my TBR list. I'm not sure how eager I am now to read it since I'll have a similar reaction to the coffee aspect.

[Sheri]

It’s still a really cute story! I like the idea of an orc leaving the adventure life to build a coffee shop even though no one knows what that is

[Rebecca]

I survived three days in an office! With people! Now I have to...do that again tomorrow.

Call Us What We Carry - This is from the poet who read at the presidential inauguration. It was explicitly about recent events like the pandemic and BLM protests, which makes perfect sense but I hadn't considered it before starting. This poet is extremely talented. I did find myself occasionally disagreeing with her, but her command of the craft was striking and I thought her ideas worth contemplating. Definitely a career to follow.

The Appeal - Recently the buzz in the mystery world, this is a book presented as a dossier of emails, messages, and other documents given to some law students by a senior partner for review. They, and thus the reader, are given basically no context up front, but the story unfolds through the correspondence of an amateur drama society attempting to fundraise for a little girl with cancer - though all may not be as it seems. It was a ripping good time, leavened with bits of humor, but I do think it sort of cheated; there isn't really a good reason for the lawyer to have proceeded in this way, some of the evidence is withheld until later, and there's a conceit that basically...ignores how email replies work? So, a fun read, but maybe not quite a fair puzzle.

QOTW: I recommend books that I think people will like, for specific reasons or because they are just so good, but I wouldn't say I want to discuss them. Really all I want to say is, "I KNOW, RIGHT?" or even just "EEEEEE!" with jazz hands. I guess if I feel the need to discuss implications or whatever, it probably means I didn't love the book and wouldn't wish it on someone else.

[Kathy]

Also wishing Sheri success with new migraine meds!
Just one finish this week-had a weekend road trip with other people and actually conversed instead of read. Read Archenemies which is the second in a trilogy by Marissa Meyer the Lunar Chronicles author. Loved those, these not quite so much. World involves people with super powers who become crime fighters/villains. Liked the first one fairly well, but the teenage angst was a little high in this one. Also could have used more background review and less finish-in-the-last-book-of-the-trilogy plot.
QOTW:
I try to get people to read books all the time so I can discuss them but am often unsuccessful because most people either don't read as much as I do or prefer different stuff. So would love to chat with someone about Kaiju Preservation Society...

[Shel]

Kathy, my other GR group just voted to read The Kaiju Preservation Society in June. Hop over and join us!

https://www.goodreads.com/group/show/...

[Susan]

@rebecca, I think I'm going to suggest Call Us What We Carry for my neighborhood book club. We just read two fiction books these past two months (and I've been meh/3 stars on both) and this would make a nice change. I glanced at reviews on GR for it and several people say listening to the audiobook with her reciting is the way to go if possible.

@shel and @kathy, I want to jump on the The Kaiju Preservation Society bandwagon too! It has been on my must-read-soon list since it came out but I haven't gotten there yet.

[Sheri]

I have a hold on the Kaiju Preservation society at my library, so I'll have it read whenever that comes in :) Looks like it says about 10 weeks though.

[Kathy]

Looking forward to talking about Kaiju with everyone soon!

[Rebecca]

Yeah, I was thinking about suggesting Kaiju for book club maybe in a month or two once it's more available.