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hi everyone! Posting a little late today, because I was trying to finish a book, haha.

This weekend was a holiday weekend, and I had guests in the house the whole thing. Meant I didn't get much reading done. But I still did get some stuff read.

Finished:

Murder on the Orient Express - I enjoyed this a lot. It was an easy read, and I didn't really expect how it ended up. I also laughed when I realized there was totally an Animaniacs episode based off it, with Hercule Yakot.

Love Bites - I just needed a break from the other book I was reading, so this was a re-read. My weekend was so busy it ended up taking me all weekend to just get through it.

Homegoing - This is the book that i had to take a break from. I initially had picked it for my book about a difficult subject, but the waiting list was so incredibly long, I didn't want to wait that long to finish the challenge. I might count it for the Read Harder immigrant prompt. Kind of dubious if it counts though, since it follows two branches of a family through several generations. Both branches ended up in America from Ghana, but the narrative was not really about the immigration, more about the family ties through the generations. I had a lot of mixed feelings about it. It was well written, and it does tell a really important narrative. However because every chapter dealt with a new character/generation, i had a hard time really feeling invested. You could kind of piece together what happened to previous generations based on the next one's story, but it just wasn't really satisfying story arcs.

Currently reading: Technically nothing because I haven't started it yet, but next on the list is The Obelisk Gate which I need to hurry up and finish so I can read the 3rd book before it expires off my kindle.

How's everyone else doing?

Sheri, you've inspired me to pick up Murder on the Orient Express. I don't really like mysteries, but I was already thinking about picking it up in advance of the movie coming out soon.

I've slowed down reading a bit now that school season is here, but I did manage to check my first prompt off of the Popsugar advanced reading challenge. I read H.G. Wells Star-Begotten as my book I bought at a used book sale. I picked it up last year at a library fundraiser for $1. This book was strange and I have mixed feelings about it. At first I thought it was satirical--and parts of it definitely were--but after doing some additional reading about it, it turns out that it's supposed to reflect some of Wells' beliefs about how we should go about improving mankind and making a Utopian society. Given that he wrote it in England in 1937 and he studied under Adolphus Huxley, he had much to say about what people were up to, but some of his ideas (or at least the ones in the book) were pretty disturbing.

I also just started Kushiel's Dart as my book over 800 pages (7% done!). It was not what I was expecting, but I really like the way the author uses language and the way she's borrowed from all sorts of myths and history to create..well, it feels like an alternative history of England around the time of the Roman Empire, but maybe some read it as an entirely different world. At any rate, it's promising to be an interesting read and I'm looking forward to seeing where it goes, even if where it goes seems likes it's going to be fairly dark and twisty.

What's everyone else reading?

Stephanie,

You might like Murder on the Orient Express, even though it's a mystery. For all that it's a murder mystery, it feels less...gritty than a lot of them. There's not a lot of gory details, abuse, betrayals etc. It's a pretty straightforward whodunnit type.

And yeah, a lot of old sci fi has some really weird ides of utopia. Have you read Huxley's Brave New World? That's another of those "er...ok..." type utopia books. Or I guess more utopia-that-is-dystopia. So if they were studying together at that time, I could see how those ideas would permeate Well's work.

I know we talked about Dart a bit, but I do really love her world building. The impression I got from it was that it is supposed to be it's own separate world, but there's extremely clear parallels to our world. I think she gave it a degree of separation so she can tweak stuff to suit her own ideas. But it does feel like she researched the cultures she's referencing, so they feel fairly legitimate.

And yes, dark and twisty is a good description. But not dark as in "I don't know if I can handle this" levels of twisted. I hope you enjoy it, I dont' want to oversell it and have you not enjoy it like Boneshaker, haha. I know someone over in popsugar's group read it and HATED it. So your milage may vary. (kilometerage?)

Sheri, yes I have read Brave New World...many, many years ago. I remember that it kind of blew my mind, but not as much as 1984 (which I read in high school and several times since) and Animal Farm, which I read later. I don't really remember too much about it, and sometimes when I think of it, I realize that I'm actually thinking about Oryx and Crake, which makes several direct references to BNW in the scenes where they're touring the labs that grow pigoons and the chicken nubbins...Perhaps it's time I give it a read again, but not quite yet. I need a bit of distance before I revisit turn of the 20th century fictional utopias!

Boneshaker, ha! I'm known for having lacklustre reactions to movies, books, and performances that I've heard all sorts of good things about, so that's probably more me than you. I'm approaching Kushiel's Dart more cautiously. I read a bit more last night and I'm still enjoying it!

I remember 1984 making me SO MAD in high school, haha. I've always been an escapist reader, it's only been in the last few years that I've been trying really hard to make myself read more nonfiction and "less fun" reading that I feel is important. It just made me so, so angry that there was no hopeful message in the end. I get what the point is, more so now than I did then, but I just HATED it at the time. And I haven't read since, haha. I hated Animal Farm too. I didn't hate Brave New World, but i only read it a year or two ago.

Partially my point of reading more classics now is exploring my theory that the way schools handle required reading makes people hate reading. Trying to see if I enjoy reading classics more now, when I choose to read them. My results are kind of mixed. I actually didn't mind Austin when I read it in middle school, I can't stand her now, haha. I didn't particularly enjoy Tess D'Ubrevilles. Really disliked Wuthering Heights. I thought 20000 Leagues Under the Sea was so deathly boring, with all the logs of what fish the narrator saw that day. However I re-read Color Purple this year, and enjoyed it a lot more than when I read it in school. I read Their Eyes Were Watching God and it was good. Loved Anne of Green Gables. I enjoyed Frakenstein to some degree, although the writing style was a little difficult to get through. SO maybe it just comes down to I'm a really picky reader, haha.

Hello, hello! This weekend I finished A Closed and Common Orbit. I have 9 books left in my reading challenge and this doesn't satisfy any of them. It was an impulse grab at the library. It was a pretty good read - it switched back and forth between the main character's life now and when she was growing up. Even though I didn't read the first book (this is a stand alone sequel), I didn't feel like I missed too much. I might go back and read the first one after I finish the challenge.

Sheri - I think your theory is right! I love reading. Alway have. However, one of the prompts I have left is a book I haven't read since high school and I just can't figure out what to read. Anything I remember reading back then I remember disliking or hating. Perhaps I also have really picky reading tastes. haha. I've read the Color Purple before for school (not sure if that was high school or college), maybe I'll pick that up again.

Hello! This week, based on a thread on FoE, I reread Nora Roberts first novel (1981) and its sequel story (1988), Irish Hearts: Irish Thoroughbred\Irish Rose Reissue by Roberts, Nora Paperback since I had it on my bookshelf. Ouch. While I can see her style in there, thankfully she's come a long way. Or maybe society has too. The lack of consent and employer/employee sexual harassment was so blatant. And the first one suffered a lot more from my romance pet peeve - if people would just talk to each other like normal there'd be no problem whatsoever! Lack of communication as the only plot structure drives me nuts!

On the other hand, I just ordered Astrophysics for People in a Hurry from Amazon and should have it to read for the weekend! I'm seeing NdGT at a show at the end of the month. A friend and I even ordered galaxy T-shirts to wear to it!

Hello! I just joined Å·±¦ÓéÀÖ yesterday. I switched from LibraryThing partly because I heard about the FoE group, and partly because LT's app is...unhelpful. I tried to import my LT list, but that didn't work, so my challenge this week was to add them all manually! (I didn't have ratings or reviews or anything.) I've got most of the titles and just need to work on the dates. That will be an ongoing process.
I'm currently reading The Martian, which I didn't get to in my Kindle Full of Beach Reads from a recent vacation. Next up is Mystery in the Channel. It looks like I can get Hidden Figures: The American Dream and the Untold Story of the Black Women Mathematicians Who Helped Win the Space Race from Overdrive, so I may try to get to that for the book club.

Susan,

Let me know how the NdGT is, I've been wanting to read it!

I've thought about seeing him live, but every time I watched Cosmos, I fell asleep. Not because it was bad, but because his voice is just so soothing! I was worried if i saw him live, i'd just pass out haha

Rebecca, welcome!

I've been there, when i started my Å·±¦ÓéÀÖ account a few years ago. Luckily for your kindle books, you can import via amazon :D
I like the Martian a lot, hope you enjoy it. And yay for the book club! I read it at the end of last year, it was a good read. THe movie condenses stuff a lot into an easier to follow whole, but the book is great for learning about just how many woman worked at Langley.

Hello Rebecca, and welcome! I've been toying with the idea of reading Hidden Figures for the book club, but I'm number 17 on the Overdrive waiting list at my library, so I don't think it's likely to happen. I will get to it eventually, though--probably in the new year!

Susan, I'm also interested in the NdGT book and would like to hear more about it and the show.

Stephanie, I leave the book club threads up and unlocked. So even if you don't' get to it until next year, you could still comment once you read it :D

Sara - I haven't read a Closed and Common Orbit yet but I really enjoyed Long Way to a Small Angry Planet, I think only one or two of the characters overlap but it was very good. I just finished reading The Black Unicorn by Terry Brooks which I quite enjoyed. I'm now finally reading Assassin's Fate by Robin Hobb, and am already sobbing my way through it.

Welcome Rebecca! The Martian is amazing! Everyone in my family read it, in book version, in a day (different days!!) because we just could not put it down. I loved everything about it. It reminded me a lot of The Hunt for Red October in it being a freshman novel and its technical details that just made it so compelling.

I just finished Hidden Figures for the book club. I got halfway through the quick book before I realized that either I or my library messed up. The book I had was the "Young Readers Edition"!! so it was a quick read, about 200 pages. Ha ha! I probably didn't pay really close attention when I ordered it online for my library. I guess that is a sort of Cliff Notes for the book. But it was good!