Week 1 Check In

[Susan]

Happy New Year everyone!

I'm excited to start the new Book Nerds challenge. I hope everyone is having a good start to the new year.

Please put any Book Club suggestions in the other thread. It will be closing soon! It is under "FoE Book Club -> Book Selection for January 2023"

I have a few starts and not much in finishes.

Although I listened to the audiobook on our drive to Christmas, I am counting Letters from Father Christmas as a finish this week. I got the printed book from the library and went through it again to see the artwork that we missed from the audiobook. The reproduction of the letters themselves and the art were wonderful. So I'm counting it as a new finish. I used it for the "Author with 2 or more initials" and "Tis the Season" and "Non-fiction book related to fiction".

I started Horse because it is my neighborhood read this month. My neighbor gave me her copy after she DNF'd it. Hopefully I'll like it more than she does.

I am speed-reading A Practical Wedding: Creative Ideas for a Beautiful, Affordable, and Stress-free Celebration. My daughter got engaged at the end of 2022 and is having a wedding in 4 months. FYI that is literally "tomorrow" in wedding-time. We have a venue and food and a photographer. But lots to do. So we're both reading this book. I got 75% through in one sitting.

I'm listening to The Human Division. But the weather has been terrible this week so I've not been walking outside alone much.

QOTW:
Are you doing any challenges this year? Or have you set any reading goals, whether some number or other goal?

I am doing the Book Nerds challenge for the 3rd year, but still informally. I use one book to fill as many prompts as it fits. Then I see how it is going later. For the first time ever, I put a goal of 40 books on GR. That is about what I read in 2022 but it's significantly higher than earlier years which were high-20s or low-30s. So I'll get to see if 2022 was a fluke or not.

[Sheri]

Hi everyone,

Happy new year!

Busy start to the new year at work, after a quiet last week. Everyone apparently wants to get going all at once.

Looking very forward to vacation at the end of the month! Also many live entertainment things coming up in february. Seeing Beetlejuice the Musical, the DSO doing the score of Princess Bride while the movie plays, seeing Jagged Little Pill the musical, then in march seeing Elle King, april seeing Welcome to Nightvale live. I missed live entertainment, it's nice to get back into it. (still masked, myself!)

This week I finished:

Network Effect - i do try to start the year clean with no ongoing books, but I still has 5 hours left on my audiobook re-read on New Years eve and I just didn't have the bandwidth to be listening to it all day trying to finish it. But considering the rest of Murderbot is novellas that are about 4 hours, i don't feel TOO bad about that. It's like i just had a fresh novella to start the year.

The Grief of Stones - I was all raring to go for my TBR challenge, so of course the library hold that i'd been waiting on for about 6 months dropped like 3 days before the end of the year. It was pretty short at least! It's no Goblin Emperor, but I enjoy the series. More a series of connected mysteries than the big complicated plot. Looking forward to the next one. I'm only casually doing book nerds, but I slotted this in as "bureaucracy in action". It fit several, but that sounded like a harder prompt to fill, and this certainly worked for it. Lots of stuff involved with his position and where he might end up and how he ended up with an apprentice and such.

Fugitive Telemetry - figured i might as well finish the murderbot listen-through. Still good as ever <3

Bunny - JUST finished this. So very weird. Kind of if you took say mean girls or heathers and then added some horror based magical realism. I keep hearing "I love you bunny" in a really cloying voice and it's creepy. I'd probably make a good, creepy movie that i don't know if I'd actually watch. This was the first book off my IRL book club's tbr challenge that someone had picked for me. so 1/22 down!

Currently reading:
Sorrowland - doing the audiobook, will be for read harder's audio book both written and narrated by a PoC.

QOTW:

I always put in a number for goodreads. I think I've settled on 150 as a sweet spot of not blowing by the number, but I don't constantly get told that I'm behind if I get in a little bit of a slump. I do a lot of comic book trades, and I often have an audio book going so that inflates my numbers a lot.

I am for sure doing Read Harder, I really liked the prompt list this year with the exception of reading a book I DNFed. I'll have to think on that one. Although I DID dnf the Kite Runner which featured heavily in The Reading List. So maybe I should try that one again. I don't know. I'll think on it. I do have some other ones I just set aside because I wasn't in the right mood.

I'm casually doing book nerds. I'm in the popsugar groups on facebook/discord/goodreads, but i don't really like the prompts this year. Not that they're bad in and of themselves, just I've done the challenges for so many years, they're very repetitive. So i'll probably just kind of see how i did on that one without trying again, like I did last year.

And as i mentioned I'm doing the mount TBR challenge in my book club to just read books that i already own, and i have my list. I think some of those I can easily apply to other challenges.

[Daniele]

Happy New Year!

After having our Xmas plans fully cancelled due to that freakish blizzard, followed by unseasonably warm temperatures, winter is finally supposed to reach us, which means I will be hunkering down to hibernate. That should be good in terms of reading by physical TBR!

Three finishes so far, all sort of cheats:

Recursion, which blew my mind. One of the top three reads of my adult life. But it was an audiobook that I started last year.

Culdesac, a novella in the same universe as Mort(e), which I thoroughly enjoyed last year. It was a Xmas gift, and I always enjoy getting a quick first read done at the start of the year.

Fortunately, the Milk, because I needed something to transition me back to normal reading life after Recursion. I figured anything read by Neil Gaiman would be lovely and soothing.

I am currently reading House of Leaves, which is an absolute WTF. It's pretty massive, with neverending footnotes and footnotes to the footnotes, so that is going to take me a while to get through. The premise of the main story is intriguing, but the format can do your head in. And I know it's a quirk of one of the characters' writing, but my eye twitches every time I read "alot" and "should of"!

QOTW: I've set my challenge at 100 again this year, but I haven't reached that in 5+ years. I'm far more likely to hit one book a week. Other than Book Nerds, I'm also tracking Popsugar, ATY, the one from the former Hogwarts Running Club, another HP-themed one on FB, the 52 Book Club, and the Booklist Queen. Bookriot's prompts have gotten way too restrictive for my taste.

Additionally, I am challenging myself to whittle down my physical TBR stacks (yes, plural). And finally, my favorite Booktuber, CriminOlly, published a video about the books he wants to read before he turns 50. I'm on that countdown too, so I think I'll make a list :)

[Sheri]

House of leaves gave me nightmares about my house trying to eat me. I had to have a different book to read before bed, haha.

[Rebecca]

I remembered to put in hold requests while on vacation, but I didn't realize how many days the library would be closed, so there was some rejiggering of my new-year plans.

Trent's Last Case - Some reviews had led me to expect this to be a send-up of the mystery genre, but it wasn't really. It was basically a very early Golden Age mystery, with the only subversion being the amateur detective getting hold of the wrong end of the stick (which had already happened in a Sherlock Holmes story, so it's not exactly unprecedented). I can see why it was apparently a favorite of Dorothy Sayers, as the sleuth has a proto-Wimsey vibe. It was generally enjoyable although overly wordy.

Paddle-to-the-Sea - I read this in early elementary school and it really stuck in my head. I was reminded of it again recently and decided to check it out. A First Nations boy carves a little man in a canoe inscribed "PLEASE PUT ME BACK IN WATER - I AM PADDLE TO THE SEA". We then follow Paddle from a melting snowbank into a stream as he encounters various landscapes, creatures, and helpful humans on his adventure through the Great Lakes to the sea. I thought it held up very well; it uses "Indian" as would have been current at the time (with some characters using a now-derogatory contraction), but while I cannot speak to the accuracy of the portrayal of Anishinaabe culture, the book treats the Native character respectfully and I think it could be given to a child with a bit of explanation of its historical context.

QOTW: I am continuing to opt out of challenges and goals. I think I do an OK job by myself, and it just adds unnecessary friction.

Sheri, I did finish The Kite Runner and I did not enjoy it. I know it's a best-seller and everything, but it didn't work for me. (I felt the same way about Life of Pi, which is also apparently in The Reading List.) Not to say you shouldn't try it, just solidarity if you don't make it through.

[Shel]

My first finish of the year was The Tiger and the Wolf by Adrian Tchaikovsky. I have read a lot of his SF but never tried his fantasy until now, and though it had a bit of a slow start I loved it. I have the rest of the trilogy handy to finish but I have some library loans to get to first.

I'm currently about halfway through Fairy Tale by Stephen King and it's wonderful so far. I love King.

I recently started reading A Wrinkle in Time to my 7-year-old - not sure if I mentioned it last week - and just started Dragonflight with my 11-year-old. I think he's really going to enjoy the Pern books and I'm having fun revisiting them.

QOTW: I don't set numerical goals. I'm doing Book Nerds again, and overlapping it with the Decolonize Your Bookshelf reading challenge from paperbacksandfrybread.com.

[Shel]

Also - congratulations to your daughter, Susan! So exciting.

Sheri, my kids and I adore Fortunately, the Milk. So fun.

[Sheri]

Rebecca, yeah I DNFed it hard. I watched the movie of life of pi and thought it was just ok, it didn’t make me want to read the book at all. So maybe I’ll leave the reading list as a book I loved but not as a reading list I agree with haha.

[Jen W.]

Happy New Year! :)

No finishes for me yet. I'm still working through The Way of Kings.... I'm hoping I can finish it next week.

QOTW:
I put in my usual 50 books for the Goodreads challenge to start with. I'm also doing Popsugar again this year. Other than that, I might see where I am with other challenges toward the end of the year. Last year, I accidentally finished ATY that way. :)

[Meredith]

Hey everyone,
Long time reader of your comments, first time posting.

I had one finish in the first week of the year.

The Return of the Gods by Jonathan Cahn, which I am not sure I can even being to describe. I enjoyed it, but it was definitely not a book for everyone.

I am currently reading The Good Housekeeping Marriage Book, listening to The Sandman: Act III by Neil Gaiman, and planning on rereading A Court of Thorns and Roses by Sarah J. Maas.

QOTW:
I put in 52 books for the Goodreads challenge, but I am going to try to read more than that this year.

[Kathy]

Happy New Year! Read two things the first week. First was Starvation Lake It was a mystery chosen by my IRL book club, set in northern lower peninsula of Michigan. Mystery good, but characters and crime a little grimmer than I prefer. It reminded me why I have issues with society's obsession with sports. Recommend if you like hockey or interested in small town Michigan setting.
Second was The Lady Jewel Diviner, which I think I got in a collection of historical paranormal books from story bundle. Set in England around the time of French revolution. The main character has ability to detect jewels, and there's also a tiny vampire character. It was fine but probably won't continue the series.

QOTW: I am going for 104 books again on Goodreads, and doing the booknerds challenge for the third time. I like doing puzzles, and fitting my 104 annual reads into 100 categories is fun for me. Thanks to Daniele for the list!