EPBOT Readers discussion

Hello everyone!

I hope everyone's week went well. This was a crazy work week for me as I returned after nearly a month away. So many emails and messages. It took me 3 days to get through it all to take a breath to figure out what I actually should be doing for work now. But that was expected.

This week I finished True Blue. It was meh, 3 stars. It was fine as a fluffy vacation read but it was unrealistic to me. Basically forgettable. I mean someone pining for their childhood love (that was their brother-in-law) for 20 years until they get together. And the reconciliation with the sister was just too quick and easy.

I also finished listening to Mary Jane. I really enjoyed this. It is a coming of age story of a 14 year old in the mid-1970s who is a summer nanny in a house that turns out to be very different than her strict, conservative Baltimore suburban home. The house where she nannies is a psychiatrist treating a rock star for drug addiction. In any case, (not really a spoiler) by the end of the book the rock star writes a song. The fun thing about the audio book is that Chapter 17 is that song, performed by a rock band! I don't know what that chapter is in the printed book or if it even exists. But that was a fun surprise.

Next up for my neighborhood book club is Save Me the Plums: My Gourmet Memoir. I am only just starting this. So far it is enjoyable. I've never read this foodie author before.

And my next audiobook is Hank Green's An Absolutely Remarkable Thing. I had this queued in my player for our vacation and I got no audiobook time while away since I was pretty much never alone and walking. So far it is engaging. The main characters are 24, the age of my youngest. They are also sometimes a bit annoying. But I'm recommending my kids give this book a read.

QOTW:
Last week's question and this week's question are from Bonafide Bookworm.
Would you rather not be able to read any new books OR not be able to reread any books ever again?

This is an easy question for me. I rarely reread books so I would definitely pick not being able to reread because that would not really impact me. Give me all the new things I have never seen.

I spent a big chunk of last week working on my son's bedroom - he gave me permission to go through and throw stuff away while he was at camp, and since he has been a little magpie since toddlerhood he had a LOT of junk in there. It's so much better now!

Two finishes for me last week, and both were for my other Goodreads group:

She Who Became the Sun: takes place in a fantasy alternate historical China. The story hops back and forth between two protagonists. One is a peasant girl masquerading as her dead brother, gradually moving up in the world, the other is a eunuch in the enemy army. There are some interesting explorations of gender identity and sexuality woven through the plot. I really loved it and am going to be impatiently awaiting the sequel (expected publication 2023).

Luna: New Moon is SF set on a near-future moon. Excellent worldbuilding and characters, and I definitely plan to continue the series despite what I felt to be unnecessarily explicit sex scenes (I'm no prude but if it doesn't advance the plot I'm not all that interested).

QOTW: I guess not being able to reread, because I wouldn't want to give up all of the amazing new books out there, but I'd be sad about it. Sometimes you just need a comfort read where the characters are old friends, you know?

Hi, all!

Work's been kind of slow for me. Not too much going on.

This weekend, I got to see the Hamilton tour in Seattle again, so that was exciting. It was supposed to be in 2020-2021, but the entire theater season was more or less delayed by the pandemic. I'm a musical theater geek, but my partner is less so, so I got myself a season ticket and he comes and picks me up afterward and listens to me gush about shows. It works for us.

This week, I finished:
Signal to Noise - 3.5 stars, for the Popsugar set in the 1980s prompt. I thought the teenage characters made the kind of mistakes that teenagers really make, and that felt very real to me. They were not always likable people, but I was still invested in them.

Comics & manga:
Dragon Age: The First Five Graphic Novels
Heartstopper: Volume Three
Snow White with the Red Hair, Vol. 20
How Do We Relationship?, Vol. 6
Honey Hunt, Vol. 1
The Girl from the Other Side: Siúil, A Rún, Vol. 1

Currently reading:
Never Say You Can't Survive: How to Get Through Hard Times by Making Up Stories - Really enjoying this so far; it's a great collection of essays on fiction writing and being creative even when life is difficult. I'm taking my time with the book and only reading one or two essays at a time, giving them a chance to stew in my brain and hopefully spark some writing mojo.

The Bear and the Nightingale - a reread for the Popsugar prompt of a book that takes place during your favorite season (winter). I loved this book the first time I read it, but I never got around to the sequels at the time, so I wanted to refresh my memory before reading them. I'm planning to read the rest of the series to fill other prompts, too.

QOTW: That's really hard to choose. I do tend to read more new stuff than I reread, but sometimes I do want or need to reread, especially when getting caught up on a series, or when I want a good comfort read. Same as Shel, I'd ultimately choose not being to reread, but I'd be really sad about it.

Vacation was nice but I am now very tired. This weekend I will have to buckle down to some serious doin' nothin'.

The Last Days of the Dinosaurs: An Asteroid, Extinction, and the Beginning of Our World - This was interesting, but I did not entirely love the format. It's written like one of those CGI dinosaur shows where they describe a day in the life of a triceratops or whatever, in this case just before the K-Pg extinction and then in the hour, day, year, 100 years, and up to a million years after. Then there is an appendix at the end explaining the evidence used to construct the vignettes, what is just speculative, etc. The author explains why she did it that way, but I think I would have liked it more if everything had been woven into the main text.

The Wild Robot - I saw praise for this somewhere, and it sounded like the middle grade version of A Psalm for the Wild-Built. It's not not that; similarities include a sort of episodic nature with a very loose plot, focus on personal growth, vague allusion to climate change, uh, being in the woods... This felt young for a middle grade, with very short chapters and illustrations, more toward the Charlotte's Web side of things. Also it ended with more of a cliffhanger than I tend to like. I probably won't pick up the sequel.

QOTW: I'm with Susan on this one: I don't reread very much, so while there are a few I would miss, it's an easy decision.

I feel like it's been ages since I checked in. this past week has been a bit of a triumph reading despite work being crazy.

I finished recently:

The Dress Shop on King Street by Ashley Clarke. I started this in July and set it down a few chapters in. However I picked it up last week and inhaled it. the story bounces between the 1930's and current day and tells the story of a biracial woman who passes herself off as white during the days of segregation and her family's story. it is intertwined with the story of a young woman she taught to see and the romance that develops between the girl and her grandson.

500 Miles from You by Jenny Colgan. This is the third loosely connected book in her Scottish Bookshop series. the story is of two nurses who switch places as part of a mental health recovery program aimed at helping medical staff recover from mental burnout. Lissa is suffering PTSD after witnessing a young man she knew get run down by a reckless driver who thinks he is a member of a rival gang. She switches place with Cormac an Army veteran from a remote Scottish Highland village. This book was such a sweet story that had me both in years of sadness and happiness.

The Kindred Spirits Supper Club by Amy E. Reichert. A romance set in the Wisconsin dells between Sabrina, who comes from a family whose women members help recently departed ghosts from the area finish their unfinished business and help them to pass into the afterlife. and Ray, the recent returning member of one of the founding families of the town who had purchased the supper club. There is a mystery the two need to find to help both Ray's recently departed uncle pass on and his great grandfather's ghost and the ghost Molly who had been hanging alongside Sabrina's family since the 1930's.

This QOTW is hard for me. I am a re-reader of comfort books so wouldn't want to miss out on that. But I love seeing new stories...

@rebecca, have you read The Ends of the World: Supervolcanoes, Lethal Oceans, and the Search for Past Apocalypses? In terms of extinction events and the history of the earth, I found it fascinating.

@susan, I have not! I will bookmark that. I did read When Life Nearly Died: The Greatest Mass Extinction of All Time, which is specifically about the end-Permian. It's been a while but I recall it being in the "thorough if dry" style.