Week 30 Check In

[Susan]

Hello Everyone,

We returned from our three weeks in the PNW late last night/very early this morning. So far we did not get covid. I tested this morning after returning. We stayed with our adult kids and mostly ate in. Only 5 dinners out (3 out of them outdoors) and most of the time outdoors hiking at national parks. Thank you Sheri for posting last week. I am sorry to hear about your continuing no-good, very bad year. I hope you get to find a vacation you're comfortable taking. You deserve it!

My only finish in the past two weeks is a reread. With my daughter and her boyfriend during our numerous hours of driving to/from and within the park, we listened to The Kaiju Preservation Society. We managed to finish just as we returned to her apartment at the end of our four days away.

On the airplane and now today I listened to Mary Jane. I am about halfway through it. That is the book for my neighborhood book club, which met earlier this week and I couldn't attend anyway. It is interesting so far. It is a coming of age novel in the early 1970s.

I've been reading True Blue. It is a romance-ish novel. It fits the bill for a long vacation in that it requires no mental energy. I am almost done with it. But it is not a great book. The characters are frustrating. The main character has been waiting 20 years for her lost love who married her horrible sister. I'll finish but I don't care about them.

QOTW:
Has a book ever changed your life? If so, how?

This is a tough one for me. One book from a while ago that hit me hard and is quite memorable is The Last Lecture. It was Randy Pausch's last lecture as he was dying of cancer. While a critical review is that it is a bit self-indulgent and how great his life was, etc. I connected to it in several ways. I am in computer science and have worked in jobs that closely worked with CS professors at CMU where Randy was a professor. I did not interact with him personally though. This book came about a few years after my husband (also in computer science) battled cancer in his 30s. So the book verbalized a lot of the things we, as a family, went through during his battle. Thankfully my husband was cured and that battle was now 23 years ago.

[Shel]

Hoping for continued negative tests for you, Susan!

Two finishes for me last week. All the Seas of the World is the latest book by my all time favorite author Guy Gavriel Kay. This wasn't quite his best work, but it's still beautifully written. I slotted under the "In the Navy" prompt since our protagonists end up involved in a crucial naval battle.

The other was A Face for Picasso: Coming of Age with Crouzon Syndrome, a memoir that I chose from a list of recommended reading for disability awareness. It was one of the best memoirs I've read in a long time.

QOTW: Interesting question! I don't know that I can go so far as to say that a book completely changed my life, but I have definitely found books that have helped me to cope with various challenges and feel less alone. Best example of that I can think of was the memoir An Exact Replica of a Figment of My Imagination by Elizabeth McCracken. I had miscarried twice in a row and was deeply depressed as a result. I attended a support group for pregnancy loss and the social worker running the group recommended the book. It helped immensely to see that here was someone who'd been through the unimaginable and came through the other side to find new joy in life, without forgetting the sorrow.

[Jen W.]

We've been dealing with a bit of a heat wave around here, and we don't have AC. Thankfully, it should cool down by Monday. But for now we've just got our fans running 24/7. This is the one time of year I miss not going into the office where it's air-conditioned.

Finished since last check-in:
A Prayer for the Crown-Shy - 4 stars. I liked it, but not quite as much as the first book. It was still excellent, though.

Mexican Gothic - 4 stars. It was T. Kingfisher's author's note at the end of What Moves the Dead that convinced me to pick this up right now. They make an interesting pairing, read together. I didn't expect to like this one as much as I did.

Comics & manga:
Fruits Basket Another, Vol. 1
Fruits Basket Another, Vol. 2
Fruits Basket Another, Vol. 3
Heartstopper: Volume Two

Currently reading:
Signal to Noise - for the Popsugar book set in the 1980s prompt. So far, I'm enjoying it.

Never Say You Can't Survive: How to Get Through Hard Times by Making Up Stories - not for a prompt, I'm reading this to get inspired to write.

QOTW: I don't know if I can say a single book changed my life, although I can say I wouldn't be the person I am without books in general.

Hmm, I guess I could say Mercedes Lackey's books changed my life indirectly, in that they led me a fan group where I met some lifelong friends.

[Rebecca]

I'm trying to have a lazy weekend, because next week is yet another family thing. This time it's a beach week with my husband's family, including a bunch of cousins and their kids.

Travel Light - So Amal El-Mohtar is super obsessed with this book and included it in her part of This Is How You Lose the Time War, so I thought I would check it out. It starts out very fractured-fairy-tale-ish, with the protagonist raised by dragons to consider heroes as evil, but then it shifts gears midway and turns into almost a bizarro C.S. Lewis, like if The Horse and His Boy were about corruption in the Byzantine church. It felt uneven overall and I didn't think the "the Hobbit but female!" hype was justified (although that's not the author's fault). I personally won't be recommending this as a lost classic.

The Puzzle of the Red Stallion - This is an entry from the middle of the Hildegarde Withers series, in which a spinstery schoolteacher and a New York cop solve murders. I picked this one because it happened to have been reviewed by the guy I follow, and it was entertaining if not the cleverest of mysteries. I liked the bits written from the perspective of the titular horse; I don't know much about horses, but they sounded plausible. Also I was enchanted by the bio of the author that said that after writing the first book in the series, The Penguin Pool Murder, he leaned into the penguin thing with a collection of penguin memorabilia, and friends and fans would send him penguin stuff. I might have to read that one, too.

QOTW: Yeah, I would say that books cumulatively have influenced my life, but I can't think of one specific one that had a large-scale impact. The question did remind me that there were apparently multiple instances of people recognizing the symptoms of thallium poisoning after reading an Agatha Christie book in which it was used. That's life-changing for real!

[Trystan]

still reading Trouble with the Cursed. the last time it took me forever like this was in 2020, when everything was shut down. weird.

QotW: I'm sure, like Rebecca said, books have cumulatively influenced my life, but i don't think i could pick just one.

also - Rebecca! i now own Travel Light because i also read This Is How You Lose the Time War! when i read Travel Light, i do remember liking it, but it might need a reread some day. right now it's packed in a box in our storage locker,