Week 42 Check in

[Susan]

Hello!

I'm a little late posting this week. I'm home for about 14 hours between visiting my 93 YO mother who lives 450 miles away and a 4 day business trip early tomorrow morning. Just enough time to get a load of laundry washed, repack and water my plants. My sister (who lives 3 miles from my mom) and my mom read a lot so I came home with a bunch of their 'already-read' books.

Last week I finished Call Us What We Carry. I've discussed this the past few weeks and not much changed for me by the end. I do not love reading poetry as a book typically and this was no different.

Based on mentions in the past few weeks here, I started The Ex Hex. It seems like a good October story and will be lightweight for my travels. I don't have high expectations other than a cozy escape for it.

ETA: I'm also reading While My Sister Sleeps. I am not bringing it on my travels. It is about a family dealing with a comatose adult member. So far it is interesting. Some character relationships are a bit over the top for me. But otherwise pretty good.

I'm still listening to The Bullet That Missed. I get very little walking alone time on either of these trips so that one is sort of paused until I'm back into my normal home routine.

QOTW:
Do you prefer reading old books or modern ones?

I definitely prefer relatively modern ones. A lot of fiction has not aged well in its treatment of women, minorities, attitudes, etc. Much non-fiction is out of date. Someday I should go back an reread others to see how they aged.

However, some really old books can be intriguing. A few years ago in a used bookstore I bought a book for a friend about "Front doors of Salem" and it described the doors of many of the still-standing historic homes of her town. It was written about 100 years ago. That sort of thing is interesting.

[Shel]

Hi all! Last week I read:

The Atrocity Archives by Charles Stross, first book of his Laundry series. It was fun, but didn't quite grab me as much as I'd hoped it would - a little too much technobabble that made my eyes glaze over. I'm interested enough that I'd like to pick up the second book at some point, but don't feel the need to read it right away.

Artificial Condition by Martha Wells, the second Murderbot novella. I'm finally getting around to reading these after hearing everyone rave about them, and I'm completely in love with Murderbot! Must read more :)

And I finished listening to Love That Story: Observations from a Gorgeously Queer Life by Jonathan Van Ness, read by the author.

I just got The Sunbearer Trials from the library so that's next!

QOTW: I agree with Susan about older books often not having aged well. I tend to stick with newer books as well. That said, reading older nonfiction can be an interesting look at what's changed... I was gifted The Sea around Us by Rachel Carson as a graduation gift from undergrad with a marine science degree, and it was absolutely fascinating reading what scientists USED to believe about the ocean basins before the days of plate tectonic theory.

[Jen W.]

Hey all!

Finished:
Winter's Orbit - 4 stars - It was a little slow to get started and I would have liked a little more worldbuilding - I felt like I only vaguely understood the political situation, and I only knew that certain things were bad because the characters said so - but I enjoyed it overall.

You Only Live Once, David Bravo - 4 stars - A light, fun middle grade involving time travel. I enjoyed it.

Comics and manga:
The Complete ElfQuest, Volume One - 3.5 stars rounded up - I know I read some ElfQuest as a teen in the 90s (dating myself) but I think what I read was much later in the story than this volume. I decided to start at the beginning and catch up on some classic comics. Some of it feels very dated, and I'm not super fond of the "fated mates" tropes, but overall I'm interested enough to read more.
Yona of the Dawn, Vol. 37
Something's Wrong With Us, Vol. 10

Currently reading:
The Ones We're Meant to Find - picked this on a whim from my TBR. So far it's interesting. From the cover I was expecting more fantasy, but this is a dystopian, post-climate-change future.

Planned/upcoming:
Into the Riverlands
Broken
Over the Woodward Wall

QOTW:
Interesting question, considering I touched on the early ElfQuest comics feeling dated in my notes.

I prefer more modern books on the whole. I have both classics and older books that I still enjoy, and some that even aged well. But I agree that a lot of fiction feels dated not just in treatment of marginalized groups, but also in terms of technology.

I also find that a lot of older writing, especially in classics, is really dense and more difficult to read, which means they're slower for me to get into.

[Sheri]

Hi all,

Fall's always buys, with end of year weather ups and downs, and trying to make the most of any last good weather we get. Plus October means Drawlloween, so trying to squeeze in a drawing a day, and halloween costuming and everything.

This week I finished:
The Daughter of Doctor Moreau- This was a little disappointing for me. I've liked everything else I read by her quite a bit, this fell a little flat for me. I think it's because the perspective was split between Carlotta and Montgomery. I didn't care about Montgomery's story, and I thought it used too much time so that Carlota didn't get enough time to really get fully developed. Which made her kind of flat and wishy washy.

The Halloween Moon - this was cute, i kind of wish I saved it a little closer to halloween. Oh well, maybe next year! Fun read, especially those with middle-grade readers.

The Bear and the Nightingale- audio re-read. I really like the series, good narrator for audio.

The Girl in the Tower - second of the audio re-read

Currently Reading:

The Yellow House - books & brew read. This is honestly probably one of the most difficult books to get through I've had to read for book club. It's a memoir, which is usually the non fiction I have the easiest time with because it's the most narrative. But it reads more like the driest dustiest history with zero passion or emotion. It also meanders all over the place and mentions so many different people that I just can't keep track of who is who. I've been reading it for five days now and i'm only a quarter through and i don't know if i can manage to finish before it's due. If my time runs out before i'm done i'll probably just call it done and that's that.

QOTW:

I agree with several others, i tend to prefer more modern books. Like others mentioned, older books tend to be full of sexism, racism, thicker hard to parse language etc. There's some older books I love because of nostalgia, but even going back and reading them now there'll be passages I cringe at.

It's one of the reasons I've kinda given up on the whole feeling like i "should" read classics. I've read enough to feel like I've covered a certain amount of "important" literature. But so many classics are just by dead rich white men and I just don't really feel like i'll be that much more enriched by reading more work by them.

[Rebecca]

Death and the Conjuror - I started reading this before vacation and then left it in the gosh darned office *facepalm* so I had to finish it after I went back in. The classic mystery internet was all over this one, as it is basically an homage to the locked-room mysteries of John Dickson Carr. I was not fully enamored, as I prefer a little more emphasis on character and I don't require my crimes to be impossible (so I'm more into Christie than Carr). It's clearly intended as a series, and I'd give future books a maybe.

Beloved Beasts: Fighting for Life in an Age of Extinction - So this ought to be subtitled "profiles of conservationists" or something; it's not really about the beasts, but the people. I had read about some of them before, but some were new, and the author tried to highlight the differing motivations and methods of conservationists, both individually and as things changed over time. I felt it ran out of steam a bit at the end when it seemed like the author had met some contemporary scientists and just had to put them in.

QOTW: Well I guess I'm bucking the trend, as I read a TON of old stuff. A lot of this is down to the Golden Age of mystery fiction being when it was, but also I don't generally mind (and in some cases specifically enjoy) older language and I liked a lot of the classics we read in school (Shakespeare, Dickens, Brontë). There are a couple of authors I've sworn off for egregious racism/sexism, but I don't usually find it to be too bad, and I suppose I try to take everything in context. Of course there were also women and people of color writing throughout history, and it can be enlightening to find some of their works (have I raved enough about Passing yet?). I wouldn't say I necessarily prefer one or the other, as I do read modern books also.

[Sheri]

Yeah I should probably specify that if I’m going to read older works, I’m more likely to read something by a woman or a person of color. But I do still get kind of stymied by the language

[Kathy]

Making some progress on my yearly goals this week, although one was a kid poetry book Antarctic Antics: A Book of Penguin Poems to make quick progress and get my BN poetry prompt done.
I read the The Cartographers and did not enjoy as much was expected. I used it for the character who makes you face palm prompt; protagonist should have called the police more than once instead of what she did. Sometimes when reading urban fantasy like this, I was fine with the magic mixed with current world, but then the author makes an error about the real world (the weather conditions in Wisconsin in September) that distracts me and knocks me out of my suspension of disbelief.
Somehow two of our FoE bookclub suggestions both came through from the library in the same month. Read and liked The Thursday Murder Club but agreed with some comments that a lot of people died for a sortof cozy mystery. Finished The Sunbearer Trials and thought the LGBTQ+ characters were well done, but overall borrowed too many elements from big book-to-movie YA franchises.

QOTW: I reviewed my Reading Stats by Publication year, and only have 33/539 logged (all read) before 1980. It looks like about half my books are from the last decade. So depends what you call old :). When I shelve books on goodreads, I indicate a time period as well, and count "present" as anything within my lifetime (which covers back to late sixties.