EPBOT Readers discussion

Hello Everyone. Happy July! Happy Canada Day today or Independence Day to US folks. I hope everyone is doing well. I will be leaving later next week on a 3 week trip to see two of my (adult) kids that live 3000 miles away from us. I do plan to bring my laptop and will try to post check ins if needed. It is unclear how much reading time I'll have as they tend to keep us pretty busy when we visit.

In the last two weeks I finished Sea of Tranquility. It was a bit of a strange read for me. It was interesting for sure. But it felt a little disjoint too.

After that I started reading The House in the Cerulean Sea. I am about halfway through it and it has been quite enjoyable so far. I like that the main adult characters are good people.

I am also halfway through listening to The Last Colony. I may finish before my travels and will need to visit my audiobooks to see what I want to make sure I have downloaded and ready for my trip. This is Old Man's War book 3. It is completely different than the other two and a continuation with most of the same characters. So it is a fine read.

QOTW:
I'm going to steal the one Dani asked on the Book Nerds page. Today we're halfway through the year. What is your favorite book you've read in 2022 so far? Worst book so far?

I think my favorite so far has been The Kaiju Preservation Society. It was exactly the light hearted, fun escape of a book that I wanted and needed at the time.

None that I've read have been horrible, but several have been "meh". The worst two for me are probably The Vanishing Half and The Wisteria Society of Lady Scoundrels followed closely by Matrix.

Happy vacationing! I have to work four whole days next week before starting mine.

The Complete Maus - I was definitely behind the curve with this one so I'm sure I don't need to tell anyone it's good. I thought one of its advantages over other Holocaust tales was the presence of the author in the frame story as a sort of reader surrogate, grappling with his father's difficult personality, the question of whether and how the story should be told, and the incomprehensibility of the events to anyone who wasn't there.

After the Fire - This is a mystery novel set in the world of the Restoration theater. It was generally unremarkable. I read it through the state "library cooperative", which was very annoying to use and may have impacted my enjoyment of the book.

Have His Carcase - The author-insert Mary Sue with whom the dashing, rich detective falls instantly in love should be incredibly annoying, but she is actually delightful; it is in fact the detective who becomes annoying with his obnoxious devotion. Mystery-wise this one spent a lot of time chasing herring before the fairly sudden denouement. I still enjoy these, but so far I wish the Wimsey/Vane thing were...not a thing. They could just be friends! That would be fun!

The King of Infinite Space - I snuck this for Pride month right at the end. It is a Hamlet retelling that also includes three witches and Robin Goodfellow, who were apparently play-hopping. It is also a lit-fic-style exploration of the dramas of rich and/or artistic New Yorkers. It also contained a generous dollop of magical realism. Thanks, I hate it! This one is maybe for people who liked Addie LaRue and, I dunno, The Goldfinch? It was not for me.

QOTW: This may be recency bias, but I'm gonna have to go with the aforementioned as the worst book so far. For best... The Murder of Roger Ackroyd is definitely a classic for a reason and may have been the best-crafted, but A Psalm for the Wild-Built was probably the most delightful.

Susan, The Last Colony was my favorite of that series :)

I survived my school year semi-intact - I ended up missing most of the last week of school with a poorly timed Covid infection (I am fine - almost completely recovered with just a bit of lingering cough). I was allowed back just in time to be at 8th grade graduation and say goodbye before sending my students off to the wilds of high school. I got some reading time, which was good I guess?

I finished Brightness Reef, which went pretty quickly once I got into it, and I'm on the next book Infinity's Shore now - I've just started.

Two other reads for the past few weeks:
Crazy Rich Asians was okay - not my usual fare, but I got the book free from my neighborhood Buy Nothing group and figured I'd see what the fuss was all about. It was enjoyable but not so much that I want to read the sequels. Not knowing much at all about Singapore society, I'm not sure how much of the book was tongue-in-cheek satire and how much was true to life, but either way it was waaaay over the top. Entertaining, though.

The other was The Wisteria Society of Lady Scoundrels and I found it pretty meh. It was just engaging enough that I finished it, but I only gave it 2 stars. I can suspend disbelief about a lot of things if they're well done. This was just...silly.

QOTW: I guess I'll just paste in my response to Dani on the FB group :)

I’m at 45, which I’m happy with! Hard to pick an absolute favorite but standouts are Once Upon a River, Dark Matter, Mexican Gothic, and The Grace of Kings.

Worst is a tie between the aforementioned Wisteria Society and The Night Bird. I finished them both, but that's about all I can say about them.

finished Shadow Fallen, so it was kinda back to Ilium.
i have Trouble With the Cursed by Kim Harrison to pick up from the library on Tuesday.

fun times - we'll probably be moving before school starts in the fall, and i might have to take books off hold because I'm telling you it takes for-!@#$%^&-ever now to get books.

i requested TWO books, i put in purchase suggestions in mid-March and the end of April - both books popped up in the catalog, so the hold went on them on May 5th. okay, that's fine. it's now almost JULY 5th, and they're still "In Process." yeesh.

anyway, QotW: I've read 31 so far, and I've enjoyed 30 of them. the weird one out was Chouette, by Claire Oshetsky. i guess i just didn't "get it" :shrug:

Realized I haven't posted for awhile, although I was able to read and enjoy everyone's posts and recommendations. June was a month: youngestbot's high school graduation, lots of parties, yard prep and house cleaning for her party, and then the plague struck three/four of us. Fortunately none of the senior citizen party guests got sick, and our cases were all mild and we are better. And I got to see Sherri in real-life at a grad party-one of my former Girl Scouts is a family friend of hers.

Did manage to read 10 books since my last post, going to focus on ones FoEs might like best. The Calder Game is a kid book, third in a series I read with bots when they were younger (first was Chasing Vermeer). A good continuation of the series, where each book has a focus with a different artist. An Absolutely Remarkable Thing was an interesting take on how social media can affect people when mysterious giant statues show up around the world. Author is Hank Green,brother of John Green. Happy the sequel is already available. Ink & Sigil was an FoE recommendation I enjoyed. Main character is one of five people skilled at making sigils and contracts that keep the Fae world in coexistence with humans, trying to figure out who is trafficking Fae. Some interesting characters and pretty funny, even while addressing trafficking issue.
Favorite over this time (and over the year) was Mickey7, a clone on a space colony who is accidentally cloned again before the previous one died, which is illegal. Interesting stuff on cloning and sapient life while also being pretty funny. (Yes, interesting but funny does seem to be my favorite kind of book these days.)

I am up to 50 books for the year, that fill 83 of my booknerd challenge prompts. I read what I want, and fill in any relevant prompts for each book, then try to find things that fit the missing prompts as well as get down to one book per prompt by the end of the year. Favorite new reads were The Kaiju Preservation Society, Mickey7, and Not Your Average Hot Guy. All of them humorous. Least favorites (that I didn't abandon) were Klara and the Sun (everyone miserable but I wanted to know what happened), The Stolen Prince of Cloudburst (had potential but couldn't handle gaslighting of main character), Wish You Were Here (a pick from my irl book club, reminding me that popular fiction generally not for me), Rivers of London: Nig.ht Witch (confirming graphic novels not for me.)

Things have been a little slow at work, so I've been getting plenty of reading done. Since the last check-in:

A Mirror Mended, for the Popsugar prompt of a book with a reflected image on the cover or "mirror" in the title. This was really good, with some fun and witty writing.

Dogsbody, 4 stars, for the Popsugar prompt of a book with a constellation on the cover or in the title. I love Diana Wynne Jones's stories. This was dark at times and a little hard to read due to some of the subject matter, but the ending was bittersweet and overall I enjoyed it.

Sing, Unburied, Sing, which was a very tough read, especially on top of everything going on in the US right now. I gave it 4 stars because it was emotional and powerful, but it was a struggle for me to finish because I wasn't in the right headspace for it. For the Popsugar Anisfield-Wolf award winner.

Not for a prompt, but I also read The Fall of the House of Usher: An Edgar Allan Poe Short Story in preparation for T. Kingfisher's What Moves the Dead which is a retelling of the story. It was creepy, but nice and short.

Finally, I just finished All the Stars and Teeth, book 1 for my Popsugar duology prompt. it's a YA fantasy romance, but it's got pirates and mermaids, and I mostly enjoyed it. I'm just starting book 2 of the duology, All the Tides of Fate.

Comics/manga:
The King's Beast, Vol. 6
Heartstopper: Volume One
Dumbing of Age, Volume 1: This Campus is a Friggin' Escher Print
Dragon Quest: The Adventure of Dai, Vol. 2: Disciples of Avan
I Am a Cat Barista, Vol. 1
I Am a Cat Barista, Vol. 2

QOTW: I am just a bit over 100 books read for the year, although at least half of those are quick-reading comics and manga.

I think my favorite this year (so far) is a tie between Nettle & Bone and Legends & Lattes. Those are both two very different books, but are both in a way about an unlikely hero rising above hardship.

My least favorite book I've read this year was probably Cinder's Adventure: Get Me To the Wedding!, but it doesn't feel like I should count it because it was short and completely not serious. I also didn't like A Good Girl's Guide to Murder as much as I thought I was going to. It came to me very hyped up by other friends, and while I was interested in the mystery through most of the book, I felt the ending and the actual "solution" to the mystery was a letdown.