EPBOT Readers discussion

Hi all,

I hope everyone is having a good end of year, and whatever respective winter holidays they might be celebrating.

I also hope people are staying warm, and not getting stranded in airports due to flights being cancelled.

My Books & Brew has decided to do a TBR clearing book challenge for 2023, to help us get some of those owned but unread books read next year. So we all made a goodreads shelf of books that we own (either physically or digitally) but still haven't read. Then we stated how many we want to commit to reading next year. The organizer made a spreadsheet and basically made us each a column with our bookshelf link, total number, and a list with each group person's name repeating until our book totals ran out. You'd look at a person's book shelf and pick a book for them however many times your name appeared under their list. I had initially picked 20 books, but someone joined late so i bumped mine up to 22 so she could pick two more fo me (my list is over 200 books x.x ). It was fun picking books for others, and seeing what they picked for me. It'll be cool too, because so many times i flip through my whole kindle backlog and i just get hit with decision paralysis, I just can't decide what to read from too many options. Even though most the stuff on there is stuff I did buy because it interested me at some point in time. Or at least was in a bundle that looked interesting.

This week i finished:

Tune in Tomorrow: The Curious, Calamitous, Cockamamie Story Of Starr Weatherby And The Greatest Mythic Reality Show Ever - this was fun, light fluff. I'd picked it up on a whim, good end of year read.

Artificial Condition - apparently one murderbot listen isnt enough in a year, doing it again. Mostly just wanted something easy to listen to while I worked this week, and when I googled what the BBC was doing for their end of year radio drama, it appeared to be Splinter Cell which is not my jam. Usually it's something Gaiman or Pratchett.

Rogue Protocol, Exit Strategy

The Reading List - this is the January read for my book club, ugh it was so good. Made me cry in the last quarter. Reminded me a lot of Backman, A Man Called Ove and Britt Marie was Here.

Currently reading:

Network Effect - audio re-read

Probably some comics? I have the grief stones, debating if i want to start it. it's only 250 some pages. But I don't like having a book unfinished for the new year. I MIGHT be able to finish it tomorrow, if I really get into it, but i might not. Might just do a comic binge and then knock it out real quick in the new year so I can get started on my TBR challenge list.

QOTW:

Borrowing from popsugar, because it seems like a good end of year question. What were your top reads of the year? Maybe try to keep it to 10 or less, just for the sake of not being overwhelming.

Legends & Lattes - This one was a big surprise for me. I'd just gotten it off a facebook ad just before it started blowing up. I think i actually commented here because someone here read it right after I downloaded it and I figured they'd seen the same add, but actually Seanan McGuire had tweeted about it. Anyhow I had just kind of figured it'd be mildly entertaining at best, didn't expect to LOVE it. So happy for the author!

How to Be Perfect: The Correct Answer to Every Moral Question - i had picked this up mainly because I liked the good place and i heard the voice actors made appearances in the audio book. But the author actually did a really good job distilling his research from the show into a really approachable format for the non-moral philosopher to digest and understand and try to apply to their lives. Obviously nothing is presented as "this is the be all end all solution" because often the different schools of thought blatantly contradict each other. But he gave strategies for using the different schools of thought to weigh against factors in your own life and to use the teachings to figure out what matters to you and works for you in your life. I found the bits dealing with how to deal with problematic artists helpful, myself, since that's something I struggle with a lot.

The Kaiju Preservation Society - this book was just so charming and clever and fun for me. I recommended it to a ton of people and I just want more like it. Would be a lot of fun to see as a movie, as well.

Light from Uncommon Stars - this was beautiful and just combined so many things i loved into one book. I really would love if the author wrote more within the world.

The Very Secret Society of Irregular Witches - this was a charming warm hug of a book. It reminded me a great deal of the House on the Cerulean Sea. I loved it so much.

The Reading List - I know i just i finished this so maybe i"m biased. Hard to tell if i'll still be this affected in a few months. But right now I just loved this. It was heart warming and heart breaking and just so good.

Hello!

We just returned from western PA from sharing a house with 19 extended family. So far 5 have COVID after returning home. The time spent together was wonderful. Hopefully no more become ill. We drove Thursday and Friday during the major storm. Thankfully Friday's drive was only 2 hours long and we were in the house by 11am. Later arrivals couldn't get up the hills and had to spend that night in a hotel.

Anyway, I finished The Party Crasher. This was a fluffy read with no expectations and that is how it ended up too. Parts of it were silly but it was low stakes and low stress.

I started One Day in December. That one seems like it will be more annoying for me because it already is set up to be "characters who don't talk to each other about the elephant in the room". I brought it on the trip only because I had it in my pile at home and needed something to read.

I am only a little further along listening to The Human Division. My phone died last week and I just got my final new one yesterday so my listening has been limited. But maybe it is all better now.

QOTW:
Great question. I completed 42 books in 2022 which is far more than usual. Several of you inspire me and give me some excellent suggestions. Sheri - I just added The Reading List to my TBR list and will suggest it at my neighborhood book club.

My favorites were (in no particular order, mostly reverse chronological for 2022):
The Kaiju Preservation Society - I do find that I enjoy John Scalzi's snark enough and this was totally the "pop song" of a book that he advertised it as. Wil Wheaton as the narrator does such an excellent job.

The Bullet That Missed - I have loved every one of the Thursday Murder Club novels. I love the characters, the stories and how the author treats older adults.

The Psychology of Money - I have an interest in personal finance and enjoyed this book a lot. When my adult kids visited while I still had it from the library I "assigned" them some of the chapters to read while here because it was that meaningful.

The Woman They Could Not Silence: One Woman, Her Incredible Fight for Freedom, and the Men Who Tried to Make Her Disappear - So many emotions while reading this book.

Gulp: Adventures on the Alimentary Canal - Mary Roach at her finest. I have two family members with ulcerative colitis so the digestive tract is interesting and meaningful to me.

Leviathan Falls - The Expanse is an excellent series and earlier this year I finished it with this culmination. This entry serves as a recommendation for the whole series.

I'm back from visiting the in-laws, where I saw a lot of birds.

Mystery in White - On Christmas Eve, several passengers decide to leave their snowbound train in an attempt to walk to a different station. As the weather worsens, they stumble upon a house with tea ready but no one home. It's a good setup, but the plot ended up being pretty convoluted with a lot of coincidences, and there's some question of psychic phenomena. Still a sufficiently festive mystery for the season.

The Clockwork Crow - A slightly steampunky children's fantasy, also set at Christmas. It's basically the winter magic version of The Secret Garden. I thought it was well done, and I probably would have liked it at the appropriate age.

Charlie Brown's Christmas Stocking - This is a very short collection of comics that were published as special inserts in magazines or something. I was not super impressed, and points off the Hoopla version for not showing facing pages together, so you get the caption and then the image.

The Case of the Pocket Diary Found in the Snow - This is an early Austrian crime novel in the vein of Sherlock Holmes (genius detective, not really clued). I enjoyed it and will probably read more, as they're available from Project Gutenberg. I did select this one because Wikipedia gave an alternate title of "The Secret of New Year's Eve", but as far as I can tell it takes place between November 18 and December 3, so I'm not sure what to make of that.

QOTW:

A Psalm for the Wild-Built and A Prayer for the Crown-Shy - I found these very touching and am still hoping for a third entry.

A Most Remarkable Creature: The Hidden Life and Epic Journey of the World’s Smartest Birds of Prey - This sort of thing is just my personal jam.

The Complete Maus - It's famous for a reason. Everyone should read it.

Still working on The Tiger and the Wolf - I'm actually really loving it, I've just not done much reading this week (unusual, because it's school vacation week and I've got a lot of free time, but I've used a lot of that time doing some major organizing and decluttering).

Bedtime kid reads: I just finished The Demigod Diaries with my son, and just started reading A Wrinkle in Time to my daughter.

QOTW: Fine, I'll narrow it down to ten :)

Feed by Mira Grant (who is Seanan McGuire's alter ego): This had been sitting on my kindle unread for several years and I hadn't been motivated to pick it up because I'm not really into zombies. I should have had faith in the author, because it really wasn't a zombie book, the zombie apocalypse was just the setting. I cried at the end. Highly recommended.

The Fall of Babel by Josiah Bancroft: Fourth and final book in the Books of Babel series. The series should be better known than it is, because it's some of the best steampunk I've ever read.

Greenglass House by Kate Milford: a middle grade mystery that I read with my son and a wonderful example of how books written for younger readers can be thoroughly enjoyable as an adult. There are more in the series which we fully intend to pick up!

The Poisoner's Handbook: Murder and the Birth of Forensic Medicine in Jazz Age New York by Deborah Blum: Nonfiction, SO fascinating!

A Face for Picasso: Coming of Age with Crouzon Syndrome by Ariel Henley: chosen from a list of recommended disability-focused books, and one of the best memoirs I've read in a really long time.

Once Upon a River by Diane Setterfield: this book felt like sitting around a campfire listening to a storyteller offering folktales. And it made me want to travel to Great Britain and hunt down the source of the Thames.

Beyond by Mercedes Lackey: going way back to the founding of Valdemar. I'm a HUGE fan of Lackey's Valdemar books - they get re-read often - and this was a ton of fun. The second book of this trilogy has just been released and I'm on the library wait list for it.

She Who Became the Sun by Shelley Parker-Chan: a fantasy epic set in an alternate China. Book 2 is supposed to come out next year.

The Spirit Catches You and You Fall Down: A Hmong Child, Her American Doctors, and the Collision of Two Cultures by Anne Fadiman: should be required reading for anyone going into a medical field. Cultural barriers are much more than just language.

The Woman They Could Not Silence: One Woman, Her Incredible Fight for Freedom, and the Men Who Tried to Make Her Disappear by Kate Moore: I can't believe I'd never heard of Elizabeth Packard before this.

Happy New Year! Fifty pages to go on my last book of the year that will bring me to my (revised) goodreads goal and my last BN prompt!
Last batch of books of the year were definitely mostly rereads selected to finish up my BN prompts, for banned book (Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince), five-letter book (Flush), book about art (The Laughter of Dead Kings), and book with pictures (Tuva or Bust!: Richard Feynman's Last Journey). It was still sad when Dumbldore died. Elizabeth Peters remains an all-time favorite author. What kept me going in the Richard Feynman book was the author's noting current events over the time period in the 80s and 90s. I graduated HS in 1985, so lived through all of them, and it was interesting to look back at them now.

For QOTW, I definitely had fewer 5 star books than previous years by almost half, not sure why. Favorites that weren't rereads or series continuing were Mickey7, The Kaiju Preservation Society, A Memory Called Empire, The Rook, and Not Your Average Hot Guy. Series entries were A Mirror Mended and The Serpent in Heaven. The other seven 5-star books were rereads. Have the 3rd book in the Rook series and sequel to Memory Called empire sitting on my TBR, so looking forward to those for January.

Happy new year! Here's hoping 2023 is a good year. :)

I have no new finishes to report. I'm still working through The Way of Kings, which will be my longest book for the Popsugar 2023 challenge. I didn't get as far as I hoped before the end of 2022 (I got distracted by video games) but I did get about 25% through.

QOTW:
My top reads for this year:

Nettle & Bone by T. Kingfisher

Legends & Lattes by Travis Baldree

Under the Whispering Door by T.J. Klune

The Empress of Salt and Fortune
When the Tiger Came Down the Mountain
Into the Riverlands by Nghi Vo

Never Say You Can't Survive: How to Get Through Hard Times by Making Up Stories by Charlie Jane Anders