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Hi everyone!

This has been such a hectic week with renovations, but the end is in sight!!

This week I finished:

Autonomous - really liked this one. very modern day looking to near future cyberpunk, questioning the idea of freedom and autonomy in a capitalist society. Counts for reading women lambda award winner, and aty book that won a genre award in a genre you like (won a nebula).

Memoirs of a Polar Bear - This was interesting, I'd wanted to read it for a while. I didn't really like The Emmisary which i read a few weeks ago, so was a little dubious. But I enjoyed it pretty well, even if the flow was a bit weird for me. This counts for Reading Women book I picked for a cover, ATY for a book about writing or reading (the polar bears are authors/readers), and Read Harder for animal or inanimate object perspective.

What You Are Getting Wrong About Appalachia - Interesting read, I don't really know much about Appalachia but I admit I'm as prone to vague stereotypes as anyone. It really broke down how the stereotypes are inaccurate, and who's benefitting from perpetrating them. Reading women book set in or about Appalachia, ATY book with one of the 5 W's in the title.

Currently reading:

I was trying to get into My Name Is Red but a couple chapters in and i'm just not feeling it right now. I think I'll pass for now. So I'll probably switch to The Billionaire's Vinegar: The Mystery of the World's Most Expensive Bottle of Wine which will be for Read Harder's book of nonviolent true crime.

QOTW:

Do you ever get so mad at characters in books it affects how you react to the book? Not just general "oh that was dumb, why did you do that?" moments.

I've had to DNF books before because characters just did something so dumb I could see the rest of the plot unfolding because of the dumb thing they just did. I was reading a book and had to stop because a character gave the main girl a note that said "a smart person would destroy this so no one would find it" and she promptly hid it under a pillow because she wanted a momento of his handwriting or something like that. You just know someone's going to find it later, it's going to cause a whole series of trouble. Like it'd be one thing if she just kept the note, but someone flat out said "THIS NOTE IS DANGEROUS, DESTROY" and she didn't. I've also had to put books down for a while, even if I don't DNF because the characters are annoying me and I can't make them do what is sensible.

Last week, I finished An Illusion of Thieves by Cate Glass, which I didn't realize until I started reading it was an old favorite author of mine, Carol Berg, writing under a pen name. I can see why she chose to use a pen name here; although it's an adult fantasy, it feels very different to me than some of her previous work, being about two young adult siblings reconnecting and bonding. And there's a heist, but it doesn't start until about halfway through the book. I did enjoy it a lot, though.

And then, I read Middlegame by Seanan McGuire. And... wow. Just wow. This blew me away and kept me reading. I didn't want to put it down until I finished. I loved it so much. I wrote my thoughts in my review, with a few hidden spoilers.

I'm not actually reading anything new right now. I'm not really sure what to follow Middlegame with. I think I need to give my brain a little rest before diving into something else. Maybe I'll read some of the manga I've got out from the library as a breather before I dive into another book.

QOTW: Oh, yes. I'm the kind of reader that needs to find an empathetic connection or care about at least one character in a story. If your main character is unlikable at the start, they need to show signs of something beyond that, something redeemable. I don't DNF books easily. The quickest way to get me to do so is if the main character is an unrepentant jerk with no reason behind it, and/or if they do something utterly vile and abhorrent. Thomas Covenant (Lord Foul's Bane) is a great example of this.

Quiet week here. Still working through Towers of Midnight, which at 1,200 pages is not a light undertaking. The dam has broken and all 6 major plot-lines are now moving quickly towards a climax, so it most definitely isn't dragging, for as long of a book as it is. I'm still convinced that the only way to keep track of the various plots and complex relationships in this series is to use a flowchart.

One left in the series after that, so I'm currently pondering what to read once Wheel of Time is finished: if I want to queue up a bunch of my TBR list from the library (much of which is non-fiction), or take on another series, or intersperse the two. A very cruel part of me is tossing around hitting the Sword of Truth series next, because who really needs short books anyway, right?

QOTW: I am continuously amazed at how much I sometimes manage to enjoy certain books where I profoundly dislike the main character. Much like Jen's thoughts, I think because often there is something redeeming in their story that makes the annoyance worth while and serve a purpose. For many books, there is so much else going on that I love, or other characters that I really appreciate that it makes dealing with one much more bearable. And in a few odd cases where the author has been intentional, I just enjoy watching a train-wreck of karma unfold around a jerk or idiot character. It takes a lot for me to deep six a book midway for just this reason, although it does happen.

I'm playing catch-up this week - haven't checked in in a while.
I finished The Buried Pyramid. My first impression carried through to the end - what a slog! Some of my reading buddies (whose opinions I respect) really loved it, so maybe it just wasn't for me.

My library hold of Uprooted finally came through, and I blazed through it in just a few days. I loved this book! I tend to get bored with typical fantasy tropes (medieval setting, countries at war), and I didn't find the characters particularly likable, but Novik wove such a beautiful story and created a compelling world that I couldn't put it down. It was grim and dangerous, and had a more Russian/eastern European feel than most fantasy, so that was a welcome change. A beautifully told modern fairy tale. I remember seeing some folks here comment that they didn't like Spinning Silver as much, so I'm going to wait a bit before diving into that. No need to ruin my good impressions of Uprooted :)

Anansi Boys. Oh, I LOVED this book. I've always appreciated Gaiman, but I've never really found a hook in his stories. I can see why they're so popular, but they never really did it for me. Until Anansi Boys. It had all his usual wonderful worldbuilding, grim elements, and fantasy elements, but it also had two things I've found lacking in his other works - humor and heart. I wanted happy endings, no matter how contrived, and I got 'em!

Cod: A Biography of the Fish that Changed the World. Mark Kurlansky does his usual deep dive into a foodie topic here. It's a wealth of information about a topic that I'd normally find dry as a bone, but he makes it interesting. A nice little nonfiction break.

The Forgotten Beasts of Eld. I saw this on an author's "desert island" booklist and fell in love with the cover before I even opened it. This was another fairly dark fantasy with beautiful language and a compelling story. My interest wavered a bit when the story moved away from the beasts and onto the standard "countries at war" trope, but things got back on track in the end. Definitely worth seeking this one out if you have any interest in fantasy. It's an award-winning classic for a reason.

And, finally, returning to my first love, urban fantasy. Frost Burned. Not as good as some books in the series, but a nice, quick distracted slotted between some heavier reads. Long-running urban fantasy series like the Dresden Files and the Mercy Thompson books are my comfort food.

I haven't checked in for a few weeks since I've been on the road again - but luckily this round of travel gave me lots of reading time!

At my last update, I had just startedThe Girl With All the Gifts. It took me quite a while to get through that one, although it's not exceptionally long, it felt longer to me than it really was. I didn't dislike it, it just seemed to drag in places. I know that the movie version has been on TV several times recently, but I haven't watched it...there are some things I don't need a visual for!

I next moved on to the last on my list of books that IRL book club #2 read before my time, the very first one they ever read - I Am Hutterite: The Fascinating True Story of a Young Woman's Journey to Reclaim Her Heritage. "Fascinating" might be a slight overstatement, but it was certainly a world I didn't know a lot about. There are many Amish communities not too far from where I live, but the Hutterites are a bit different, so it was interesting to learn about their way of life.

I finally got a chance to read my new autographed copy of The October Man - it was short but fun, and I hope that Ben Aaronovitch will expand more into other countries' magical law enforcement branches with future novellas or comics.

I decided to catch up on some books that have been sitting in my physical TBR pile for far too long, starting with Sea Witch. This one was a let-down for me - I love the idea of the flipped fairy tales with the villain as the main character, but this one (much like Heartless) just lacked any kind of fire in the main character, and the big plot twist was clearly stated from the very beginning of the story, so there wasn't suspense, either.

The next one in the stack was amazing, though - These Rebel Waves. It has a similar tone and style to Onyx and Ivory, so anyone else who enjoyed that might want to check this one out. I will warn you, however, that it ends abruptly in the middle of a scene and the sequel is not out yet, so if you're one of those who can't deal with cliffhangers, you might want to wait.

I just started the next one in the pile, Grim Lovelies. I'm only maybe 1/5 of the way through, but I'm really enjoying it so far.

QOTW: I can deal with an unlikable character if I can understand where they're coming from - the thing that turns me off the most is characters whose motivation is so inconsistent or absent that their actions seem random. There are plenty of folks who I would absolutely never want to hang around in real life who I enjoy reading because they've been created so three-dimensionally that their choices are interesting to see play out. The only book that has ever really made me mad at the author because of characters' thoughts or actions is a novel that I won't tag here since it doesn't deserve the publicity - but it presents suicide as the best and most reasonable course of action for multiple characters. The author specifically marketed the book to young women with mental health issues, which was what made it particularly offensive. Aside from that, though, I like hearing a variety of views on just about any story.

Kristi, I loved Uprooted but I also loved Spinning Silver. I actually just bought physical copies if both because I love them and the covers are beautiful.