EPBOT Readers discussion

Hi Everyone!

Hope you all are hanging in there.

Wish the weather would get warm again, it's so much easier when I can go for long walks and runs! Also i want the weather to get warm enough to go kayaking.

This week I finished:

Marauders by Gerry Duggan, Vol. 1 - been catching up on comics still, this was good, getting a bit weird. the whole new line of Xmen stuff is kinda weird, we'll see how it goes.

The Poet X - finished the audio book for this. Read harder book of poetry on audiobook. This was pretty good, i'm glad i did the audio book. it's written in slam poetry style, so it felt right to be listening to it.

Whiskey When We're Dry - this is my western for popsugar, and also counting it as my historical fiction not set during ww2 for read harder. I really liked it overall, even if it's not going to make me run out and start reading westerns. I think it helped that the author was Australian, and lived in many different countries before settling in Oregon. He was able to write a story that examined race and class in the west, along with gender and sexuality, in a way that didn't make a bunch of excuses for it it. but it still read as a western adventure.

Immortal Born - wanted a nice fluffy read, tore through this so it worked haha. I like the Argeneau books, even while being annoyed at them. Still fun, even when the writing gets sloppy. i counted it for my read harder romance with a single parent, and popsugar book series with more than 20 books. (this is book 30 of the series).

currently reading:

The Count of Monte Cristo - still plugging away, hope to get another couple chapters before i start another book.

So You Want to Talk About Race- audio book, will be my popsugar book by a woman of color. Kinda wish i'd gotten a print version, this is kind of serious for audio which a lot of times I cant concentrate on and end up missing bits. but it's all the library had digitally and obviously i can't just go to the library right now.

QOTW:

How have your reading habits changed, with everything going on? Reading more, less? Different kinds of books?

I think i'm reading about the same, personally. I don't suddenly have more free time, really, since I already worked from home. And weekends i get busy working on house projects and art so even then I'm not reading all day. I WANT To read more fluffy stuff, but library holds keep coming in, plus i'm still working on reading challenges and i don't want all the heavy stuff or prompts I am not looking forward to to pile up at the end. so trying to mix in light reads with the heavier stuff, or reading comics.

I finished Murder on Black Swan Lane. It was all right; the two leads didn't feel fully fleshed out, as it seems the author wanted to keep back some secrets for the progression of the series. I would consider reading the next one eventually, to see if the relationship builds to something more solid.

Next up was Will My Cat Eat My Eyeballs? Big Questions from Tiny Mortals About Death, which was great. It read exactly like Caitlin Doughty's YouTube videos: same tone, same asides, everything. She could seriously just read each chapter as a video. If you like her channel, you'll like this one.

I followed that with The Princess Saves Herself in This One, which turned out to be basically Milk and Honey: Harry Potter fandom edition. The personal traumas were different, and the metaphors more bookish, but it even had the same four-section format, for goodness' sake. I did like this one better, being a bookish sort myself, but I think that'll be my last "social media poet got a book deal" for a while.

I am now on to The New Jim Crow: Mass Incarceration in the Age of Colorblindness. I'm a decade late to this one, but I keep hearing good things about it. It's been surprisingly engaging so far (I was expecting something drier, I think).

QOTW: So far I've read maybe a tiny bit more, since I don't have a commute, and work has been slow. I'm about to start reading a LOT more, since it's been slow enough that mandatory use of vacation time has been implemented (in an attempt to avoid furloughs that may still follow).

I have been starting to really miss the library. It's only partly that there are books I can't get; my reading selections are highly browsing-based, just wandering through the shelves judging books by their covers. Random mysteries I can find OK on Hoopla or Libby, but I've struggled a bit to replace "walk to favorite Dewey Decimal areas and see what's there". It's taking more intentionality to maintain a good balance. I'm bookmarking more stuff from this group!

This week I read The Ghost Bride by Yangsze Choo and it was lovely! I enjoyed the characters and the story, but to me the real star of the book was the setting - a society of Chinese heritage in colonial Malaya (what's now Malaysia) in the late 1800s. I learned a lot about Chinese culture and about that time period, and the author (who is Malaysian herself) included a little epilogue where she laid out what came from authentic cultural tradition and which parts she invented for the novel.

I've been reading A Moveable Feast: Life-Changing Food Adventures Around the World in bits and pieces - travel and food essays that help me wander the world while confined in my home - and have just started a re-read of Old Man's War by John Scalzi. I also finally finished reading Watership Down to my kiddo and we started A Wizard of Earthsea last night.

QOTW: I'm definitely moving away from the deep, thought-provoking, difficult reads, that's for sure. I am probably reading about the same amount, but I'm gravitating towards easier books and re-reads. I just don't have the brain right now to really engage in a big meaty book, which normally I love.

It was a slow reading week for me - I spent most of it slogging through Inland for IRL book club #3. I can kind of see what the author was going for, and there are a few really well done moments, but most of it has been done much better elsewhere. We're reading it because one of the members LOVES the author's other book, so I'm looking forward to hearing his thoughts on this one to see if he's seeing something I'm not or if this was a departure.

I needed a break from required reading after that, so I'm now reading The Revenge of Magic, which I'm really enjoying - it's very well-written (we read another book by the same author, Half Upon a Time, in one of my book clubs, so I knew I liked him, but I think I like this one even more). I'm only about 1/3 of the way through, but so far it strikes me as a much more plausible version of an American magic school than Ilvermorny. :)

QOTW: I'm reading about the same amount, I think - we usually go out a lot to concerts, plays, etc., so we're home in the evenings more now - but we've spent most of that time watching TV. We've watched some really great stuff (on a literary note, we finally watched all of the Great American Read shows, and we're currently watching the Woman in White miniseries from a couple years back), because watching TV is more "together" than reading separately (since my wife steadfastly refuses to participate in any of my book clubs).

Hey all, I forgot to post that I'm going to try to remember to announce a winner for the next book on Monday. (we'll see how my time-doesn't-matter brain does with this!) So if you haven't voted, make sure to do so! Link is here https://www.goodreads.com/poll/show/1...

No finishes yet for me this week.

At the end of last week, I was dithering over what to read next. I went with something that's been sitting in my Kindle library for awhile: The Gentleman's Guide to Vice and Virtue. I'm using this as my Popsugar book with a map. It's a longer book, but I'm almost done with it. It's a very fun historical romance/adventure, and you can tell the author's done her homework. So far I'm really, really enjoying it, and I've already gotten out the sequel from the library.

QOTW: I think I'm reading about the same amount, really. I've been sticking to my daily routine as much as possible. Since I'm working at home, really the only difference is no longer having to take the bus to and from work, which lets me sleep in a little in the morning. Mostly I read during my lunch break from work, and sometimes when work is slow.

I think the biggest difference in my reading habits is that I'm reading almost exclusively Kindle ebooks now, since I can still put those on hold at the library. I was heading in that direction already, to be honest. For me, the convenience of being able to read on my phone and on my computer is the main motivator. I actually barely use my Kindle device, and usually read on the bigger computer screen.

Hooray for sunshine this week and the snow FINALLY making a major retreat! Spring's arrival in earnest is so incredibly welcome right now, even if that does primarily mean a wonderland of slush and mud until things dry out enough to start turning green.

Hubs has been working from home, meaning I have to put an extra hunker in my hunkering down to keep the house quiet for him. So looooots of reading and cross stitching. This week:

Finished Words of Radiance, the Stormlight Archive "novella" Edgedancer that follows it, and started Oathbringer. Still loving digging deeper into the story-within-a-story that is told through breadcrumbs spread throughout many of Brandon Sanderson's novels, the ones that are told through the details that you only notice on subsequent rereads. It's such rewarding to chew on right now!

I also attacked Hoopla's collection of graphic novels. The two Red Rising: Sons of Ares books were a fun spinoff and backstory. Unfortunately they had an abstractly gritty art style, which worked well for the mood of the story, but that I found really distracting.

The first two books of Firefly: The Unification War , however, were really fun! The characters and wry humor were all on point, and it's an exciting plot that worthy of being part of the Firefly saga. There are two more in the series that I'll definitely be hitting.

QOTW-
Especially with Hubs working from home, I'm pretty much just reading all day. I can binge read with the best of them under normal circumstances anyway, but this hunker season has been amazing for reading time. Current page count since lock-down is so far right around 8,000 pages. It's also very much been my escape from reality, and a good chuck of my strategy for combating anxiety, and one that so far has worked quite well.

QOTW: As a work-from-home freelancer since 2015, I haven't had more time to read either. I'm on the tail end of a busy spell at work, and I've been cooking more. I've also come to realize that I've been sleeping more - about 90 minutes more (one sleep cycle) per day on average. So that's how I've been coping.

As a result, I have zero finishes to report this week. I've barely made a dent in the next physical book I picked up, which was Motley Crue's memoir The Dirt: Confessions of the World's Most Notorious Rock Band. Between the tiny and sometimes hard to read fonts and the eye-rolling immaturity, it's slow going, even though I thought it would be a light, teased-and-hairsprayed, spandexed read. Band members each contributed individual chapters, and I'm getting whiplash, not from headbanging, but from having my longtime preferences get turned on their heads as I want to slap my fave member silly and buy my least favorite a drink for putting up with the silly shenanigans for so long.

I finally finished Math with Bad Drawings this week. It has been my filler book we own for about a year. I love non-fiction books about math in general so it served a great purpose for me. I mean, it was exactly the type of book you could put down and pick up again anytime.

In a repeat of last week, and the week before that and the week before... I am still listening to Leviathan Wakes. I am a few more hours into it, probably about 2/3 of the way through now. Several more hours to go. Still enjoying it and still happy I watched and got into The Expanse first.

I have just barely (as in, I am on page 9!!) of a book from my adult daughter that she brought to our home with her during her quarantine from NYC. It is The Brothers K, her favorite book she read last year. I have no opinion in my 9 pages so far.

QOTW: With 5 adults in our house now instead of our empty nest, it feels busier and I'm going to bed later (my usual reading time). So although I could find time to read more, it really isn't happening right now. I am cooking so much more though.