EPBOT Readers discussion

Hello all,

I hope you had a good reading week. I have no finishes this week. But I did complete an "escape room" jigsaw puzzle so that was something.

I am still reading Horse for my neighborhood book club. It is a long-ish book and I'm about halfway through. It jumps between the present day and mid-1800s unequally. Sadly the parts I'm enjoying the most are the lesser content. My one neighbor DNF'd it and gave me her copy. I'll likely finish but it's not my favorite either.

I'm still listening to The Human Division. I didn't get much walking time in this week so therefore not much listening time either.

QOTW:
How do you choose what book you want to read next?

Lately for me it has been book clubs. I have a neighborhood book club monthly that meets in person. That often drives it for me and sometimes it is the only thing I get to read. I like that this Epbot Readers is quarterly. It gives me time to get the book and read it but read other things too.

I am a member, but never attended a meeting of a 3-month-old town non-fiction book club, but haven't been a fan of the non-fiction choices. The person who started the group just posts the next book. I don't know how the choice is made, but maybe if I attended a meeting it would help. This may move to the back burner.

These are mixed blessings for me because they force me outside my reading rut. But then I feel relief when I can get back to reading something just for my pleasure.

I am happy to have tomorrow off!

Eager: The Surprising, Secret Life of Beavers and Why They Matter - I saw that this author was doing a talk for the local wildlife federation, and I thought that instead of listening to him talk about the book, I could just read the book. I have become somewhat interested in beavers due to obvious signs of their presence in a local nature preserve, but this was more about the ecosystem engineer/keystone species aspect rather than the natural history of beavers themselves. It was interesting, but apparently there isn't a lot of research on some aspects, so it was hard to decide whether the "beaver believers" were correct.

The Spare Man - This was going to be my new year read before the library delay. The author describes it as "The Thin Man in space," and I associate the movies at least with the holiday (the second one is set on New Year's Eve). There were indeed a lot of nods/references/parallels to The Thin Man, but the tone was a bit less breezy (again, compared to the films; I've read the book but it's been quite a while). I think this was due to the protagonist having chronic pain and PTSD, and her spouse being accused of the murder. That may have been a good choice, because "absurdly rich people meddling in investigations for a lark" is probably a harder sell today. A choice that I would not have made now, and probably not in the last two years when the book was written, is to name the filthy-rich-inventor-with-family-money character "Tesla".

QOTW: It's really a complex interplay of factors, most salient of which is probably what the library shows as "available" on my "for later" list. I also try to mix up the genres, preferably not reading mystery novels back to back, and throwing in a nonfiction every few books. I might also be influenced by holidays, observances, or other timely themes.

I had a good week - finished Fairy Tale by Stephen King, which was excellent, and then read The Humans by Matt Haig, which I liked better than his The Midnight Library. Some laugh-out-loud funny bits, particularly in the early chapters, and just generally a sweet little book.

QOTW: I am in one other book club besides this one, so I do try to keep up with most of book club choices. The other group (which am a co-mod for) reads one SF and one fantasy per month, plus a series read that we alternate fantasy and SF. I don't always get to everything, but I do make an effort to read the ones that interest me. Otherwise it's a combination of random things that caught my eye, books that have been sitting on my kindle, and inspiration from the Book Nerds prompts list.

Hi, everyone!

Currently reading:
Still working on The Way of Kings, which will be my longest book. I should finish in the next couple of days (finally!).

QOTW:
Mostly, whatever comes up on hold the library. If nothing's in from the library, I pick a book for a challenge that I own, or something I've been looking forward to reading for a while.

Had two starts this week that I abandoned; one was Siren Queen that was overdue and couldn't renew but will try again. The other was Babel, Or the Necessity of Violence: An Arcane History of the Oxford Translators' Revolution, which I bailed on after 60 pages or so. It's an alternate history with magic powers, but doesn't overlook anti-Asian racism, and since one of my main reading motivations is to escape reality, it wasn't working for me.
My finish that I did enjoy was A Desolation Called Peace, sequel to last year's Hugo winner. I liked the first one better but still gave this one five stars.
QOTW:
A lot of my reading is based on recommendations from here, FoE, and the Parasol Protectorate (a group of Gail Carriger fans). When I see a thread on books, I save it and/or try to order specific recommendations from the library. Then I read as my holds come in. I am also on a slow effort to reread the books I own, including many favorite series in order now that they are done. This effort also involves donating anything that doesn't earn 4 or 5 stars; 3 is my code for liked it but don't need to read again. I am doing the book nerds challenge, but I try to fit what I was going to read anyway to match the prompts. The last two years I've been able to complete the challenge and choose less than 10 books specifically to fit a prompt. My other source is my IRL book club. I am the main genre reader in our group, so I don't have the best success rate at liking what others choose. They are kind and there's no shaming if you don't read the book. Plus I have a handful of authors that I will order their new books ahead of time: John Scalzi, Andy Weir, Charlaine Harris, Gail Carriger.