EPBOT Readers discussion

Hello everyone,

Welcome to mid-November. I hope you're all doing well. For those in the US, I hope you have a wonderful Thanksgiving next week. We're staying local going to a friend's house with our youngest adult child also. So it'll be 5 of us.
My biggest concern is that my mother lives near Buffalo. She lives alone, but 3 miles from my sister. My brother-in-law has measured 54 inches of snow in the yard in the last 18 hours or so. We live 450 miles away but I've been on the phone with my mom several times today. She's only lost power once for 2 hours.

This week I only have one finish, Vanderbilt: The Rise and Fall of an American Dynasty. I used this for the Wealth prompt in book nerds. This was the pick for our town non-fiction book club. It was not something I would have chosen to read. I kind of did a speed-read of it. The topic/family is just not very interesting to me and the book jumped around quite a bit and was pretty dry.

After finishing that, I started the non-fiction choice for my neighborhood book club. It is The Last Baron: The Paris Kidnapping That Brought Down an Empire. This kidnapping happened in 1978 in Paris. Although I remember the Patty Hearst kidnapping, I have no memory of this one. I'm also lukewarm on this so far but I'm only a few chapters in. Maybe it'll get better.

I'm about 1/3 of the way through The Sunbearer Trials on audiobook. It is okay for me so far. There are parts that are annoying in the way of YA books. I am so far from that angsty drama in my life.

QOTW:
Do you prefer to read one book at a time or several at once?

For me, I can generally only read one book of a type at a time. So I usually have 2 going, one physical book and one audiobook. I also often have a "side" book going. I received Salt, Fat, Acid, Heat: Mastering the Elements of Good Cooking as a gift and it is something I pick up once in a while in the evening but it is too slow to be considered really in progress (like it has been at least 3-4 months since I touched it).

My sister is hosting this year, and I assume my step-sister will either bring her new babies or have us over to meet them, so that will be interesting.

Vagina Obscura: An Anatomical Voyage - I read this one on my work-from-home days because I didn't really want to carry it around the office. It was very interesting but also frustrating to consider the historical and ongoing sexism in science. I would recommend it.

Singing in the Shrouds - Still working through Ngaio Marsh, and this was not one of the best. It's a serial killer, which is usually uninteresting from a mystery perspective, and the detective is on a boat without his wife or sergeant, so you lose the banter. Also there were two characters implied to be LGBTQ+, one more strongly than the other, and they were not treated well. I feel like the series is probably on the decline by this point, but not yet enough that I'll stop.

The Logician and the Engineer: How George Boole and Claude Shannon Created the Information Age - I saw this recommended somewhere and apparently did not read the review on here from Paul, because he is spot-on: this is not really a history of the information age, but an introduction to Boolean algebra and logic gates for people with enough background in math and circuits that I feel like they would probably have already learned these subjects if they were interested. Also the author's short story that he threw in at the end contains some lovely casual misogyny. If you want to learn logic design, read something else.

QOTW: I really only read one book at a time. I just don't really have any desire to have multiple things going at once; I want to finish the thing I'm reading. I do sometimes have a nightstand book to read for a few minutes before bed, but this will be a reread (one of the only times I do that) and often a collection of short stories.

Happy Thanksgiving for those who celebrate. We're not going anywhere either. We're just celebrating at home with just me, my partner, and his mom.

Finished:
Ocean's Echo - This is a M/M sci-fi romance set in the same universe as the author's first book, but with different characters and in a different part of the galaxy. I really enjoyed it.

Comics & manga:
Welcome to the Ballroom, Vol. 11
Marvel Meow
Cat + Gamer, Volume 2
The Ancient Magus' Bride: Wizard's Blue, Vol. 5

Currently reading:
Even Though I Knew the End - this is a short little novella, but I'm enjoying it so far. It's a sapphic, hard-boiled detective story with magic.

Planned:
Cursed
A Snake Falls to Earth
Tread of Angels

QOTW: In general, I only read one book at a time (not counting comics). Occasionally, I'll have an audiobook and a print/digital book going, but that's the most I ever have going simultaneously.

Happy Thanksgiving to those who celebrate in November from someone who doesn't celebrate it at all, but would celebrate it in October if she did :)

Just one finish this week: The Amityville Horror, which I picked up at the Lions' Club book fair last month. If this is representative of how horror was written in the seventies, it's no wonder Stephen King catapulted to success. It tries to be both matter-of-fact and to end each chapter on a "shocking" sentence - which is almost invariably indicated with an often needless exclamation point! You could almost hear the "dramatic chipmunk" music each time :)

I used it for the Book Nerds North America prompt, which puts me at a solid 33 prompts completed. I'll be lucky if I get to 40. Not to mention I have to finish building the 2023 challenge! ***INSERT CALL FOR PROMPTS HERE :D***

QOTW: I usually have one audiobook and one physical book going. About the only exception is if I am also reading a book in French - then I can compartmentalize two books at once.

We'll be driving down to spend Thanksgiving at my spouse's uncle's place in Jersey City (across the Hudson from Manhattan - they have a lovely view of the backside of the Statue of Liberty). I have to work Wednesday morning, and I don't want to be on the road Wednesday afternoon when the traffic heading down to the NYC area is ridiculous, so we always leave on Thursday early morning when we spend Thanksgiving there and arrive shortly after lunch. We don't see much traffic until we get close to the city - and then there's going to be traffic no matter what. We haven't been to see them since pre-covid, so we're looking forward to it.

Not a ton of reading this past week. I finally got to my The Tombs of Atuan re-read and was reminded why it was my favorite of the Earthsea books! Although the experience of the book is VERY different as an adult with a few decades of life experience, compared to when I first read it as a teen.

I've started Will My Cat Eat My Eyeballs? And other Questions about Dead Bodies because so many people here have raved about it, and so far I'm loving it. It's a fun book, if you can say that about a book about dead people?

QOTW: I only ever have one fiction book going at a time (excepting the ones I'm reading to my kids at bedtime), but sometimes will also have one or more nonfiction books that I'm working through.

Hmm, didn't think I had skipped so many weeks here, but this post covers my November reading to date.

The The Spare Man by Mary Robinette Kowal was great. She billed it as "The Thin Man" in space, and it's generally fun. But she also has a protagonist with a disability, and a future where everyone introduces themselves with pronouns. I also recommended on main FoE page.

I also really enjoyed Nettle & Bone. The tagline on the back was something like "She doesn't marry the prince, she murders him." Reading so soon after Sunbearer Trials, which I thought recycled too many things from the big YA franchises, I was impressed how many traditional fairy tale elements were included in a new way. And definitely some humorous parts.

I read Malibu Rising for IRL book club. Kindof felt like 1980s People magazine turned into a book. We had fun discussing who was the inspiration for the characters.

Light from Uncommon Stars was my other November finish. Somehow the author created a believable book whose characters include aliens, demons, and a trans violin prodigy. There were more miserable people in the book than I usually like, but I needed to finish to find how the interesting blend of storylines was going to end.

I picked a few things to finish my last few BN empty prompts. I read original Frankenstein. I was amazed at how little plot there was in a book that length but kept going to see what was from the original vs. movies. Honestly, the 2-page wikipedia entry covers everything. Another was a childhood book for yellow, The Many Inventions of Alvin Fernald. Aged mostly ok.

QOTW: I usually read one fiction book at a time. But if I'm reading something I'm not crazy about (like some IRL book club picks) or nonfiction, I will add something else.