Week 10 Check In

[Sheri]

Hi all. It's been a tough week this week. Teddy had to go back to the hospital this week. He had another urinary block brought on by the stress from the surgery. In the process of the vet visit to deal with that, we also found out that the lump removed was definitely cancer, so that was a low blow too. We're probably going to have to consider more surgery to deal with the blockage issue too, which we were hoping to avoid, but we can't keep having these issues and diet is clearly not enough. My poor little boy! He doesn't deserve all these issues. But he came home this morning, and we cleared out the guest room to have a no climb zone. He managed to open up his surgery incision at the hospital so it had to be re-closed and start healing all over again. So now he's coned and on a strict no-climbing for 10 days confinement. Please send good vibes for my little Teddy Pickles <3

Anyhow, this week I finished:

Backpacking Through Bedlam - I love Seanan McGuire and InCryptid in general, but this one fell a bit flat for me. I felt like too much time was spent on filling out stuff that should probably have been part of the previous book or a short story, too much time was spent in flash backs, and it didn't leave enough time to deal with the actual story arc. By the time stuff started actually happening it was basically over and now most the actual plot will end up in the next book I guess. I did love the short story at the end though. I hope James gets a book of his own eventually.

I'm Glad My Mom Died - this was a heartbreaking listen. I don't LIKE saying it, but i'm kinda glad her mom is dead too. I was making horrified faces while listening to the things Jennette described her mom doing or saying.

Pandora's Jar: Women in the Greek Myths - I actually thought this was a fictional retelling when i bought this on a deal, but it's actually nonfiction. I ended up really liking it though. It was about digging into the earliest origins of the various women that appear in mythology and how their stories are often more complex and nuanced than the more popular versions that we're familiar with now. I had no idea Pandora used to be basically an Eve figure in Greek mythology, created by Zeus and gifted gifts from all the other gods before she was basically reduced to a box opener.

Currently reading:

Siren Queen - interesting book so far, about a Chinese American woman in the golden era of Hollywood trying to become a star, but in a world full of magic where doing so might be deadly. I like it better than The Chosen, The Beautiful so far.

Alanna: The First Adventure - audio book, never got into tamora pierce whenI was younger, poking at them here and there now. i like them so far!

QOTW:

I'll borrow from popsugar this week: Do grammar errors or mistakes in books bother you?

I tend to not notice/care TOO much if it's just a singular or couple errors. Everyone makes mistakes, things fall through the cracks. It only really bothers me if it affects the comprehension of the sentence, or if it feels like the entire book missed the editing stage.

Continuity errors bother me more, especially when they feel like something that should be caught by a good editor. I read a book once where the ENTIRE BOOK had a previously established character from another book called the wrong name. I feel like it wouldn't have been that difficult to look up what you named the character in the previous book. Surely authors have notes, have their manuscripts on their computers or in cloud storage, or keep copies of their books on their shelves, have relatives that do, could google their own books etc. Or a good editor would look it over and say "hey, this doesn't look right, didn't you call this character _____ in this other book?" And no it wasn't a plot point that they changed their name or anything like that.

[Jen W.]

Aw, Sheri! I'm sorry to hear that. My thoughts are with your kitty. <3

Finished:
Ariadne - 3.5 stars - for Popsugar prompt of a book with the main character's name in the title. It kept me reading, but I was a little annoyed at how passive the title character was, and how some things were changed from the myths I was familiar with.

Sheri, Pandora's Jar sounds interesting. I'll have to look that one up. I've always loved Greek mythology, so it sounds right up my alley.

Comics & manga:
Yona of the Dawn, Vol. 38
WITCH WATCH, Vol. 1
Persona 5, Vol. 1
Romantic Killer, Vol. 2

Currently reading:
The Mimicking of Known Successes - this is an interesting little novella, a Holmesian sci-fi mystery in a post-Earth society set on Jupiter. I'm enjoying it so far, but not sure if it will fit a prompt that I have open yet.

Planned:
The Unhoneymooners
The Seven Husbands of Evelyn Hugo

QOTW:
I do get distracted by errors, but in general, if I'm enjoying the story and it's only one or two issues, it doesn't bother me enough to take me out of the narrative unless it's a continuity fail.

[Rebecca]

Good thoughts for Teddy Pickles!

Jeremy Thatcher, Dragon Hatcher - There was some fond nostalgia in the Epbot Discord for this book, which I had never read, and it was on Hoopla, so... The dragon stuff was cute, but the "real-life" stuff felt pretty dated. A girl writes a boy a note saying she's going to kiss him after school, and the boy has to literally run away from her and from the school bullies, including "Freddy the Frog Killer"? This was not my sixth-grade experience. For a modern child I'd pick something either more contemporary or set completely in a fantasy world.

Why We Sleep: Unlocking the Power of Sleep and Dreams - This was very interesting, but from a practical perspective, it's right there with "eat right" and "exercise" in terms of things we know we should be doing that are basically counter to the fabric of modern society. Artificial light is bad! Gee, thanks. To be fair, the author does propose some systemic changes, but as an individual the takeaway was largely, "Welp, I'm screwed." I would recommend it if you know one of those "I only have to sleep four hours a night!" people and want to be smug at them with science.

Smallbone Deceased - This is a late-to-post-Golden Age mystery set in a law office. I liked the detective and it had some humor, but it well exceeded my knowledge of British law (which is basically nil) and didn't really grab me as a story. Coincidentally, there is a character with "para-insomnia" in which he only sleeps two hours a night and suffers no physical or mental effects but has been told he could die suddenly at any time. Given what I learned from the previous book, I am pretty confident that this is not a thing.

QOTW: Copy editing mistakes make me angry. If there were just one, I'd probably forget about it, but often when there's one, there are a dozen. It's especially bad in cheap editions of books in the public domain, for obvious reasons. I know I've complained about it here before.

[Shel]

Sending good vibes to your kitty, Sheri!

Two finishes for me this past week, one on my own, one with my kiddo:

Re-read of Children of Earth and Sky by Guy Gavriel Kay with my other GR group. This is a book that I rated 4 stars coming from Kay because he set the bar so impossibly high with his earlier books, but I would probably rate 5 stars from any other author for the beautiful way the man weaves a story. Gorgeous book.

With my son, we just finished Dragonflight by Anne McCaffrey, and it's been so much fun introducing him to a world that I discovered at about his age and seeing him fall in love with it the way that I did! There's more casual misogyny than I remembered, but I guess it's a product of its time, and it provokes some good conversations. We just started Dragonquest to continue the series.

QOTW: How timely a question! I wonder, Sheri, if the continuity error you referred to in your answer is Dragonflight/Dragonquest?? Because the character named T'ton in book 1 is suddenly T'ron in book 2 and WTF.

Otherwise, a little typo or two doesn't bother me much, but when there are a LOT of mistakes it gets to me. I'm not a grammar nerd, I never learned to diagram a sentence and I know more grammar in French than English from studying it in school, but being such a voracious reader I can usually tell if something doesn't sound right, even if I couldn't explain why.

[Sheri]

It was actually in the Argenue vampire books, one book it was Maybel and DJ, later they appeared as Hazel and DJ. So not even close!

[Susan]

Sheri sending all the positive thoughts to you for Teddy Pickles.

I have two finishes this week. I was traveling so had 12 hours on a train for audiobooks and then nights in a hotel to finish my book. I brought with me and finished I Wouldn't Do That If I Were Me: Modern Blunders and Modest Triumphs. It was shorter, smaller and lighter than the other book I have. It was the perfect length as I finished it the last night before we came home. It was fine, if forgettable, entertainment. It is humor essays with a Dave Barry-esque feel.

The audiobook I finished was the sixth Scalzi Old Man's War book The End of All Things. This one was 3.5 for me. It was a bit more scattered with the different parts of the story and although it wrapped up pretty well it also had a bit of an unsatisfying feel for me. The story was fine but it definitely was time to be done.

I'm now reading Recursion. I had started it last week and then paused and left it at home for my travels.

QOTW:
Minor typos don't bother me much. But a wrong word or the wrong spelling of a word that gets by does bother me. There have been a couple times where a character's name is the wrong one for the sentence/scene. Those usually are very annoying to me because I'm in my head like "Wait, shouldn't that be P instead of Q. Now I need to go check I didn't miss something."

And yes sometimes bad editing where there is a continuity error is also noticeable. So there are levels of errors for me.