EPBOT Readers discussion

Hi All,

I know there was just a post a few days ago, but that was technically for last week and i have a few minutes to make a post so Im making one!

Sorry for the really sporadic posting lately. It's certainly been a year. The spring to our garage door just broke today, whee. We literally just had someone out to fix the circuitry in the garage door opener, that wasn't connecting right to the main button a couple months ago. Sigh. And we STILL don't have a new septic, a thing we've been trying to have accomplished since February. WHo knew it was that hard to spend this much money? I guess i'm glad we're being proactive on this and our septic isn't actually broken. (Our test of the system before our addition said that our system was very old and we had maybe 5 years before we had to start worrying about it. that test was 5 years ago, so we're worrying about it.) I can't imagine trying to deal with this with an actually broken system.

Book club: I finally had gotten the book from the library, and I put some questions in the book club thread. I don't know if there's still interest in the book/if people are just waiting or if people ended up tapping out on it. I think we're about due to be picking the next one soon, i'll try to get another thread up to start picking it.

The last couple weeks I finished:


The Woman They Could Not Silence: One Woman, Her Incredible Fight for Freedom, and the Men Who Tried to Make Her Disappear - finally got this and finished it. I put my thoughts in the book club thread, along with some reading questions.

River of Teeth - this was weird and fun, a sort of hippo western alternate history. I picked up the second, i'll read it eventually.

The Plot - the July books & brew pick for my irl book club. I didn't like this much, it was a mixed read for my book club. But that meant it was actually a pretty lively discussion, and we talked about the book for actually longer than the full book club hour. Usually the best discussions are when people disagree. If everyone loved it, or even if everyone hated it, there's just not much to say. People just gush for a while, or gripe for a bit, and then move on to talking about whatever. This sparked a lot of arguments on whether or not it was meant to be satire, whether or not she was TRYING to write like a crappy white male writer as part of the satire or she just was a bad writer in general, whether it was a bad thing that all her characters were unlikeable jerks, etc.

A Memory Called Empire - finally got around to this, i had picked up on a deal a while ago but kept putting it off. I think I was worried it was going to be one of those really deep meaty sci fi books like Dune that you just have to wade through all the layers and meaning and politics and think about. Which can be excellent, but can feel like work to read. But once I got over the speculative fiction new words/new world/new ideas feelings, it was actually a pretty face paced sort of political thriller with really likable characters. I liked it a lot, have the next one on hold at the library.

Rich People Problems - audio re read

Felix Ever After - this started slow for me, Felix was annoying me first from a "ugh no you're making obviously bad decisions" perspective, but then things didn't go the way they seemed to be going and improved and I ended up liking it pretty well by the end.

Hollow Kingdom - This was interesting, and I do think i liked it but I'd hesitate to recommend it to many. It is NOT the book for anyone sensitive to animal deaths. It's about the zombie apocalypse, but from the perspective of the domesticated animals. The main thing saving it from being WAY too grim is that the narrator is a foul (fowl) mouthed crow who loves humans and has this core of optimism. I might still read the next, but i need some buffer between them.

City of Bones - I love Murderbot so decided to try some of Martha's older stuff. I liked it pretty well. I see a lot of similarities between Khat and Murderbot, specifically. Created races, treated with suspicion and disdain by others unless they're useful at the moment. Sarcastic humor. Tendencies towards violent responses. Pick up a few close friends who see past their races to the actual person. Didn't have the absolute instant love factor that Murderbot has, but still solid.

The Other Black Girl - This was just ok for me. I thought it sounded really good, but fell flat in execution. The ending just left me going "uh...ok?" with way too much unresolved.

Currently reading:

Honey & Spice - cute romance so far

Four Lost Cities: A Secret History of the Urban Age
- audio book. I like their fiction a lot, thought i'd try their nonfiction too.

Chilling Effect - started this and then library holds came in. So on pause until i get caught up.

QOTW:

Going to borrow from popsugar a bit this week: What have been your best and worst reads so far this year?

I would say worst read of the year for me was The Plot that I mentioned above. I just found it so pretentious, and eye rolling and predictable, and I hated all the characters except the cat.

Best is always hard to pick, but up there are probably Light from Uncommon Stars which I loved. It was a lovely mix of sci fi and fantasy, had video game music mixed with violins, faustian bargains, and it just was really great for me. I also really loved The Kaiju Preservation Society and Legends & Lattes
for similar reasons of being cozy sci fi and cozy fantasy, being a much needed respite in a terrible year.

Geez, Sheri, you just can't catch a break!! Glad to see that you've been able to escape into some good books!

Since the last post I've read Heaven's Reach to close off the Uplift series - it was a confusing but satisfying ending. I also finished reading The Giver to my son. I just love that book, and it gave us a LOT to talk about!

We were on a short road trip this weekend, and listened to most of Anne of Green Gables on audiobook. So much fun to introduce Anne to my kiddos (and holy moly, my daughter is SUCH an Anne!).

I've just picked up Paladin's Grace, and am ambivalent so far. I'll give it a few more chapters to see, but it hasn't quite grabbed me yet.

QOTW: I've read a lot of good ones, but Once Upon a River stands out as one of the best. Worst - The Night Bird and The Wisteria Society of Lady Scoundrels, both of which I wanted to like but the first had ridiculous characters and the last was silly without being clever.

Wow, Sheri! Sorry you're dealing with so much right now. *hugs*

I'm sorry, I kind of noped out of the book club book this time around. I originally wanted to read it but then on top of everything else going on in the world, I just couldn't bring myself to start something that heavy.

Finished:
All the Tides of Fate - It was good at first, except that main character seemed to reverse all of her character growth from book 1 (but she was also dealing with the trauma of the end of the first book, so that's somewhat understandable). But then the story took a turn that I hated at the end, and it made me kind of mad. If anyone's curious about why, I hid it under a spoiler tag in my review.

Comics & manga:
Something's Wrong With Us, Vol. 8
How Do We Relationship?, Vol. 5
A Man and His Cat, Vol. 6

Currently reading:
What Moves the Dead - I don't normally do horror, but it's T. Kingfisher, and so far it's more creepy than scary or gory. Although I don't normally get scared by books, I think because I'm not a visual reader, so I'm probably a bad judge of horror. It's kind of an alt historical fantasy; it takes place in a fictionalized country in Europe, and the main character is from another fictionalized country, but there's also an English character and an American.


QOTW:
It's hard to pick a worst. I hesitate to say The Dead Romantics, because I liked a lot of the book that wasn't the romance, but the romance killed it for me. I also didn't like A Good Girl's Guide to Murder as much as I thought I was going to. I was interested in the whodunit to read to the end, but had some major annoyances with the logic and the outcome.

Best is also difficult to choose. it's a toss-up between Nettle & Bone, Legends & Lattes, and Under the Whispering Door. I did enjoy The Kaiju Preservation Society a lot, too.

I had a nice vacation until someone caused a fender-bender on our way home. Fortunately everyone was fine, and our car was 20 years old anyway, but it wasn't great for the net relaxation quotient.

Stealing from Wizards: Volume 2: Burglary - Again with the caveat that I only read two Harries Potter and am thus not the target audience at all, I still think this series is a suitable replacement for your wizard school needs. There was a trans wizard in this one, so take that, Joanne! I will read the rest of these when they come out just in support of their existence.

Penny Plain - Someone in the Epbot Discord server recommended this as a public domain read. A poor but virtuous young woman raising her brothers in Scotland dreams about what she would do if she had money. In the second chapter, a rich businessman with no relations discovers he is terminally ill and vows to leave his money to the first person who shows him true kindness. If you can see where this is going, you will also immediately identify which characters will couple up by the end. Everyone reads a lot and drops literary quotations everywhere, some of the brothers' antics are fun, and I would like to say it was sweet, but frankly I found it slightly boring. Good for someone who wants absolutely zero tension, maybe.

QOTW: I don't think this has changed since last time. I'm sticking with The King of Infinite Space for worst, and The Murder of Roger Ackroyd/A Psalm for the Wild-Built for best "objective"/best for me at the time.