EPBOT Readers discussion

Hi everyone! Sorry for the late post, got busy.

It’s really cold!

Happy Valentine’s Day to those who like it, my husband and I are celebrating tomorrow by doing into Detroit!

This week I finished:

Tell the Wolves I'm Home - I really loved this! I related to June, being aw weird teen who liked stuff no one understood. There were some bits that were a bit weird and off for me, but didn’t ruin my overall enjoyment. Counted it for popsugar Bildungsroman

White Witch, Black Curse -hallows re read

Educated- I just read this back in December but it was my books & brew pick so I listened to the audio to refresh my memory. Still good but disturbing

Eliza and Her Monsters - I planned this to be a bit of fluff while I worked through the count of monte Christo, but I got hooked and burned through it and was sobbing and trying to explain to my husband why haha. Book involving social media

Currently reading :

The Count of Monte Cristo - almost 200 pages in! Only 1000 to go! Haha we’ll see how I do. I like it ok so far, but I’m baffled as to just what all is going to happen since 14 years have already passed and there’s so much book left.

Relative Fortunes - this will be my book set in the 20s . Not very far yet, no options yet.

QOTW:
Borrowing from popsugar again because it’s relevant haha. Do you like long books or short?

My sweet spot is between 300-500. There’s certain authors I like tomes from, like Neal Stephenson or Jaqueline Carey. But most the time once it starts getting that long o have to REALLY be interested. Or be feeling kind of masochistic I guess, looking at you Count. I do like short books sometimes, but I don’t like paying full price for shot books haha. Want to know I’ll be busy for at least a couple days if I’m buying.

On the subject of long books (haha!), I'm still working my way through Red Sister. It's a bit longer than I expected, but I'm enjoying it so far. I'm also hampered by my library loan running out, so I have to read on my Kindle in airplane mode, which means I can't read via the web app or on my phone. I should hopefully finish it over this long weekend.

My next read is going to be The Infinite Noise, which is my planned Popsugar book recommended by your favorite blog, vlog, podcast, or online book club. Since it's a novel based on a fiction podcast, I'm sort of bending the prompt a little bit, but I think that still counts as being recommended by the podcast.

QOTW: I agree with you, Sheri. My sweet spot is probably 300-500 pages, although I also enjoy novellas depending on the author. If it's an author I trust or part of a series I know I enjoy, I can deal with a longer tome.

Jumping in early this week.

Sheri your QOTW is very apropos this week for me. My new audiobook is Neil Gaiman's Stardust. Goodness sakes, it is 30 hours long!! At 20-30 minutes per walking time, it is going to take me a lot of laps on my 6-house street to finish that! This is after Consuming Fire was an enjoyable 8 hours. Reading the GR reviews for Consuming Fire, people were both wishing it was a longer book (I have no idea how many actual pages it is) and congratulating Scalzi on such a tight, well-written book that didn't need to be longer.

I will be starting, finally(!), The Starless Sea. Hurray! It finally came in from the library.

QOTW: For fiction my sweet spot is about 300-400 pages. It is probably less than that for non-fiction. I can read non-fiction of all sizes and lengths. Some are great small, like Neil deGrasse Tyson's book. Some non-fiction can get repetitive because they have to meet some minimum page count or something. That is annoying and I'd rather read the shorter book than rehash the same material said with slightly different words.

Susan, it seems odd to me that Stardust is a 30 hour audiobook! The book isn't exceptionally long, only about 300 pages as I recall. Is there a bunch of bonus content or something with it?

I’m wondering if it was the audio drama bbc did? Although i don’t remember it being THAT long. Double feature maybe? Book + audio drama?

I had one finish last week, How Rory Thorne Destroyed the Multiverse, which someone here had mentioned recently and it intrigued me. I was at the library with my kids and spotted it on the shelf, so I snapped it up! I liked, but didn't love it. I thought it was a clever mixture of SF and fairy tale, and it made me laugh out loud several times, but it never engaged me to the point that I had a hard time putting it down. I found Rory an endearing character with a stellar supporting cast of which the Vizier was my favorite. Anyway, I'm glad I took it out of the library instead of spending money on it, but I'll definitely read the second book when it comes out!

I've just started Morning Star to finish off the Red Rising trilogy, and have two other books lined up for the week that are the ending books of their respective series (The Winter of the Witch and Assassin's Fate).

QOTW: I have no preference, TBH! I love a ginormous doorstopper of a book if it's good one. I love a short and sweet book if it's a good one. I love books that are right in the middle if they're good. You see the pattern :D I rarely listen to audiobooks, because I don't have a ton of sustained listening time in my life, so if I am going to listen to something it needs to be on the shorter side (I more often listen to podcasts than books). If a book is really long on audio I'll just get a paper or ebook copy and read it that way.

Sheri wrote: "Happy Valentine’s Day to those who like it, my husband and I are celebrating tomorrow by doing into Detroit!"

Ooh, where did you go? My home territory :) Always looking for good places to try when we go back and visit my family!

I figured it out! My mistake. My last audiobook was a single entity of N hours long. This one is broken up into segments (as the chapter boundary does not align with a segment boundary). The chapter I'm on is 30 minutes and I misread that as 30 hours. So it should be maybe 8 hours long which is a normal length and seems to align with everyone's page count. Phew! That is a relief. Thanks all!

Hello, new group member & first comment! I use Goodreads all the time for keeping track of my TBRs but never really got into the social aspect... Until I heard there was a FOE group! Yay!

The last couple of weeks I re-read the Wayward Children series by Seanan McGuire so that I could finally read the newest one, Come Tumbling Down. (how do I create a link when using the app, BTW?) So the question of book length is ironic considering how short those books are. I really don't have a preference as long as the book is engaging - if it's short like these, I still need to feel invested in the characters and world, but if it's super long I don't want to be bored at any point.

Next up, I'm doing a little self-improvement with Do The Work and Stop Doing That Shit, by Gary John Bishop. But seeing that the Book Club pick is The Starless Sea, I might re-read that so I can participate in the discussion. It's already on my Favorites of All Time list!

I never use the app for groups or reviews because the interface is so terrible for anything but managing bookshelves, I don't know! But welcome!

I've never used the app for writing a post here. I only use a laptop. For that there is a link to "add book/author" and when you click on that, it let's you search for a book and hit "Add". Then it will add the GR link into your post with the title. That makes it super easy to add other's books onto your own list!

Shel -

We did Pop + Offworld which is our favorite barcade, got Bon bons at Bon Bon Bon, picked up Harleen at Vault of Midnight, saw Kermit on display at the DIA ( the original prototype puppet), and ate dinner at the Rusty Crow which was excellent. Super fun day!

Lost track of who asked, but app doesn’t have the functionality. If I have to update on my phone and want to link to a book I use the browser and turn mobile off so it loads the desktop. It’s annoying to navigate but at least all the features are there.

Finishes this week:

My Favorite Thing Is Monsters, Vol. 1, which turned out better than I expected. I am amazed at the work that went into the translation. There were some puns that were really cleverly done, and since the graphic novel is laid out like a sketchbook, there was of ton of additional work to re-illustrate text passages. I shoehorned it into Hufflepuff/Fortesque/historical novel.

I said last week that I wasn't really feeling Gone Girl in the first 80 or so pages. Then the book started swerving and it became an absolutely twisted delight. Loved loved loved it. Used it for Giyffindor/Fred and George/book with twins.

Next came Night, a short, brutal retelling of the author's experience in WWII concentration camps. Beautifully awful. Used for Ravenclaw/Lockhart/celebrity book club recommendation.

So I'm at 13/60 for the 2020 PHRC reading challenge.

I'm currently reading a third "blind date with a book" from my local library, Je remballe ma bibliothèque: Une élégie et quelques digressions, a short tome on readers and their relationship with books. Again, a French translation. I wish the library had indicated that, and/or given us a variety of English blind dates too. Still, it has beautiful passages, and I may just buy the original when I'm done.

QOTW: I have no problem with doorstoppers that earn every page of my attention. (I'm not convinced I'll read the last GoT books if ever they come out.) I'd agree that 400 pages is a good sweet spot. I'll admit it's more daunting to discover a new author with a massive novel than something that requires less commitment.

The Goodreads "Year in Review" stats are really interesting that way. I read 20 fewer books in 2019 than 2018, but I was only 600 or so pages behind. We'll see what this year brings...

PS: I never figured out how to add title links using the app either!

I read two related books. My college alumni magazine mentioned A Death in Harlem, and it sounded like something I would like. I learned that it was based on Passing, so I had to read that first.

Passing: I'm surprised I hadn't heard of this. It seems like the sort of thing someone should have made me read in high school. It actually reminded me a bit of The Great Gatsby in language and in some of the imagery (extreme heat, everyone's clothes), which I suppose shouldn't be surprising as they were written around the same time. I had the ending slightly spoiled by reviews of the other book, and then more spoiled by this book's introduction, but it's not really plot-driven so it didn't matter too much.

A Death in Harlem: After reading Passing, I wasn't sure how it could be turned into a murder mystery. It turns out to be a very loose interpretation with the characters and events changed significantly, which worked. Unfortunately I thought that the choice to switch between different perspectives worked less well, with some events being unnecessarily recapitulated without much new information added, and there was a subplot that ended up going nowhere. There were also a few copy editing errors. I enjoyed it, but I don't think it quite lived up to its inspiration.

QOTW: I probably prefer books of about 200 pages. I don't usually buy them, so I don't feel I'm losing money if they're short, but I don't want to have to carry a bunch of books around or visit the library constantly. I do read longer books, but if they're very long (like 500 pages) I often have to work myself up to them. I'll pick one up and set it back down again, and repeat this for a few library visits until I'm ready to take it on.

This week I ready the 27th! China Bayles mystery. Apparently I enjoy a little herb knowledge as a side to my murders. Also almost done rereading the Peter Shandy mysteries, finishing #9/10. I have started rereading the The Collapsing Empire, in preparation for the final book in the trilogy coming out in time for my bday. Early reviews indicate that Scalzi "stuck the landing" of the series so I am looking forward to it.
QOTW
As I have branched out into more scifi and fantasy since joining FoE, I have learned that I prefer things to be a little less epic. I tried the first books of two popular series that were around the 600 page mark, and was disappointed that their endings weren't very satisfying, and I was just frustrated that the authors couldn't find a decent ending in that many pages. There are some longer fantasy books I've enjoyed, but I need about a year break between the super long ones. I prefer tight plots and good character diaglogs to emotions and scenic descriptions, so that tends to favor things that are a little shorter.
I have grown to admire authors that can knock off a satisfying story in under 200 pages. I'm a fast reader, and it makes me happy if I can sit down and be engrossed enough in a book to read it in one sitting.

I'm way behind in posting, but luckily don't have many books to mention. Since my last check-in, I finished The Calculating Stars and Drinking Midnight Wine. I listen to the Writing Excuses podcast in which Mary-Robinette Kowal is one of the main hosts, so it was nice having a lot of background information on The Calculating Stars before reading it. That definitely helped me enjoy it more. That said, I never really connected with any of the characters in the book. It's a great story with a fascinating concept behind it, but eh...I guess I'm just not that into NASA-variety space-y stuff.

I loved Drinking Midnight Wine, though. It's part of the early wave of urban fantasy - back when the genre was new and exciting and there was still a lot of mythological territory to cover. Instead of the typical big city drama, this takes place in a small town in the English countryside - big drama at a site of major ley line convergence. It has gods and demigods, and one very amusingly snarky protagonist who winds up in the middle of things because he couldn't take his eyes off a pretty woman on the train. It reminded me a bit of Neil Gaiman's tone, but more lighthearted and fun. Not quite Christopher Moore levels of absurdity, but definitely along those lines of humor.

Kristi, I love Simon R Greene :)

His Nightside books are a lot of fun, if you like sort of dark urban fantasy horror. They remind me of a much more intense Dresden files. I want to say Drinking Midnight Wine is tangentially related, or at least there's some similar things mentioned to place them within the same universe.

Hey all! Omg, these last couple weeks have been terrible for reading.

Last week I finished One Touch of Scandal, which I actually really enjoyed as a nice brain break. It has a mystical element to it, although it's not really a straight up paranormal romance, and that made it different enough to keep the plot and character interactions feeling fresh and interesting. I also liked the writing in this one ... the pacing was good, and the storytelling felt natural.

I'm still working on the gardening book. :P

QOTW: I actually don't know if I have a sweet spot for book length! I think I agree with others here that jumping into a really long novel by an untested author feels like a big commitment, but I also read fast enough that it usually isn't a huge problem. I've also changed my reading habits from my younger days though... I used to try and finish a book no matter what, and these days I'm more inclined to quit if I'm just really not into it.

But, having said that... most of books I'm reading these days seem to be in that 300-400 page range, and they do just feel short. I finish them in a few hours and then I have to find something else to read. I do like a book that I can stay with for a while, provided it's not really dry.

Hi All!
Looks like I somehow manged to miss last week, so here's the two week update from my life. Being that I'll be unemployed at the end of this week, I foresee lots and lots of reading time in my immediate future while I job hunt.

I had a hunch two weeks ago that Tolkien was calling, and indeed he was. I needed something less depressing than Camelot to read for awhile, and The Lord of the Rings is very much my happy, comforting place for reading, and very much my literary first love. This was the book that I fell for so hard the first time I read it, that it turned into a 3-day hardcore binge read, to the extent that I really messed up my shoulder from leaning on it too long. So I'm just over halfway through The Fellowship of the Ring. We just got to Rivendell, and I'm still every bit as in love with it!

Depressing or not, diversion or not, of course I'm halfway through Camolud Chronicles #7 The Lance Thrower, just for good measure. I know I've read this one, but I have zero memory of it. So far, it's Lancelot's backstory, which will eventually evolve into the classical Camelot story, recounted from his perspective. Lance always wind up either being the one-dimensional romantic hero or the equally one-dimensional goat, depending on the re-telling (unless you're Monty Python), so I'm really enjoying seeing him come alive with realistic nuance and feelings.

On a dare from a very random thread over on the Mothership, I read The Dinosaur Lords. This had the potential to be either absolutely amazing, or a complete cheeze-fest. Knights who ride dinosaurs, how can this go wrong? It can when it's all Game of Thrones-style political maneuvering, and the dinosaurs really get little more than a passing mention in place of horses. Dear author: please do NOT introduce me to a guy who rides an albino tyrannosaurs named Snowflake (yes, really!) in the first chapter, and then go a completely different direction with your plot!!!!!! The sequel is supposed to be better, so I might try it at some point.

Read Magnificent Ms. Marvel, Vol. 1: Destined. first book with the new author and I found that I really enjoyed it! New direction for the story (which was random, but worked well), and and a bit of a new look, but I'm definitely excited for this series to continue to unfold!

QOTW:
I tend to enjoy sprawling and epic, so luckily I enjoy going long on my reads and series. I love the intricate world-building and characterization that comes with having that much space to work with. After re-reading Wheel of Time last year, I think my average page count was just over 450 before I dove into a bunch of novellas. This year will see a fall reread of the Stormlight Archive series, all of which are over 1,000 pages, and I'm super excited to revisit them in preparation for November's release of book 4!!!!