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Hi everyone,

Hope everyone is doing well!

This week I finished:

This Will Be My Undoing: Living at the Intersection of Black, Female, and Feminist in (White) America - backfilling some ATY prompts, this was my 20th book, the 20th book on my kindle when sorted by unread, most recent. It was a good perspective on what it's like being a Black woman in America, felt like a good companion to the Hood Feminism I read a couple weeks ago.

Artificial Condition - Re-read, I want to get around to the rest of the series but it'd been a while.

Mexican Gothic - Ended up being a timely read at the end of Latine Heritage month, start of spooky season. Was good and creepy without being too nightmare inducing. I kinda saw where the plot was going, but it was still interesting and I liked the lead character. I am casually doing a fall reading challenge that someone in the popsugar facebook group came up with, calling this one the book involving falling. There were some literal falls, some falling for traps/plots etc.

A Wizard’s Guide to Defensive Baking - I absolutely adored this, such a good read for 2020. Lots of railing against establishment, the whole concept of making people heroes so no one has to look to hard as to why things got bad enough that a hero was necessary, while still being cute and funny and having carnivorous sourdough. Totally recommend!

Currently reading:

Lab Girl - this will be my book about nature for fall reading challenge, I'm liking it so far. It's a memoir of the author's life and journey getting into science and building labs and such.

Nocturna - finally got this back so i can finish the last couple hours

QOTW: I'll borrow from popsugar again this week. Do you have certain books that you read at certain times of the year?

I admit that while I LIKE the idea of season reads, it rarely works out for me. I do a lot of library holds, so trying to get those to cooperate on specific timing is kind of a lost cause. Even if you THINK you're timing it right, the holds will come way faster or slower than you think. I don't really own that many seasonal books. Even if I did own, there's still trying to juggle the reading against library book due dates. Although it was nice that Mexican Gothic accidentally worked out. Most my seasonal media ends up being movies and music.

I've been having a hard time tearing myself away from my jigsaw puzzle, so haven't gotten as much reading done this week! I did finish The End of All Things and quite enjoyed it- it always feels good to finish a series! I did find that as much as I appreciate Scalzi's light-hearted snarky tone, it seemed that every single character had the same wise-cracking personality and it became hard to distinguish them (not that I had a hard time keeping track, but that their personalities were all identical so I didn't get a sense of who each individual character was as a person). I think his style works better in stand-alone books because of that - the longer series makes that weakness in the writing style stand out more. But I still enjoyed it and will read more Scalzi!

I don't teach afternoon classes on Fridays (and how amazing is that -- Zoom teaching sucks but at least I have an awesome Friday schedule) so my plan is to sit down with New Kid, for our upcoming One School One Book series of activities that I'll be doing with my advisory group starting in a few weeks.

QOTW: Not most of the time, for the same reasons you say, Sheri. Although I do have a few favorites that I like to re-read at certain times. I particularly like A Night in the Lonesome October by Roger Zelazny for this time of year (hmm...I missed yesterday but the first chapters are short, maybe I'll re-read it again day by day this year!). Each chapter takes place on a day in October with the climax, of course, taking place on Halloween. It's good fun. Another seasonal favorite I sometimes like is Hogfather by Terry Pratchett around the December holidays - it was actually my first Discworld and so I have lots of warm fuzzy feelings about it :)

I do love Hogfather, I just don't always have time to read it :)

I'm doing pretty well this week. Tired, because work's been busy, but I'm taking off Monday and Tuesday to relax a little. :)

Sheri, I loved A Wizard’s Guide to Defensive Baking! I'm glad to hear you enjoyed it.

Since the last check-in, I've finished Anne of Green Gables on audio. This was my Popsugar book set in a country that begins with "C". I never read it as a child, so I don't have the sentimental feelings about it that I think a lot of people do. If I had read it as a kid, I'd probably have adored Anne and felt the same way. As an adult, I liked the story well enough and quite liked Anne as a character. But it was a product of another time and I cringed at some of the casual racism/discrimination.

Some comic finishes:
The Promised Neverland, Vol. 14, Beyond the Clouds, Vol. 1
A Man and His Cat, Vol. 1 - this is an adorable humor/slice-of-life comic, and I recommend to anyone who loves cats.

Currently still working on Winter Rose, my Popsugar book published in the 20th century. I had to put my Kindle in airplane mode because I did something dumb and accidentally returned it early. D:

I also started reading/listening to Battle Ground via my partner's Audible account. I've slotted this one into the prompt for a book with the same title as a movie or TV show but is unrelated to it, since it apparently shares a title with a WWII film. It's a bit of a doozy so far. I'm about 2/3s through it and I almost cried once. I don't think it's quite as much a series-changer as Changes, but it is basically one big battle (hence the title) without a lot of downtime.

QOTW: I don't generally do seasonal reads for the same reasons you cited, Sheri - juggling library holds and due dates. I do try to match stories to seasons and moods when I can but it's much easier, I think, to do seasonal reads with short stories or novellas that are quick to slot in between longer reads.

Our library has reopened for in-person browsing, which means I probably won't be going in to pick up holds any more. Back to e-reading next week.

The Plot Is Murder is about a widowed teacher who retires to open a bookstore and write a novel, and then ends up solving a murder with the help of her grandmother and some other ladies from the retirement village. The action is interspersed with chapters of the character's novel. It's like "Yo dawg, I heard you like cozy mysteries so we put a book in your book so you can trope while you trope." It was a good time but not a great work of art. Another series for the "sometimes you need a mindless cozy" and the "Black mystery authors" categories.

Next up was The Great Indoors: The Surprising Science of How Buildings Shape Our Behavior, Health, and Happiness - the author did a short spot on NPR, and this did seem an appropriate read for right now. It's an overview of how various aspects of interior environments impact human well-being. Interesting but not remarkable. Takeaways: we don't know very much about the indoor microbial environment, and you should probably look at nature or pictures of nature as much as possible.

I heard about Ella Minnow Pea: A Novel in Letters, which is described as "progressively lipogrammatic", through internet linguist Gretchen McCulloch. She gave it an enthusiastic recommendation, but epistolary fiction isn't my fave, so I wasn't sure. It turned out to be linguistically delightful, and worked surprisingly well as a book, given that it's basically premised on a gimmick. The simplistic story was still disturbingly dystopian in these troubled times. Recommended for language lovers.

Last this week (these were all fairly short) was Death by Dumpling. It's set in the area where my husband grew up, so I thought that would be fun. Also I like food. Somehow this one didn't really grab me; I'm not sure why, as the writing was probably better than the previous cozy. The author did employ my mystery pet peeve, "this picture looks familiar but I just can't place the face" - totally unfair to the reader, but employed even by the likes of Doyle and Christie.

QOTW: I do like seasonal reads! It's a lot easier to do when one is willing to read things with titles like "Pumpkin Dis-Patched: The Underwater Basket-Weaving Club Mystery #14". I'll likely be posting about something in that vein by the end of this month.
I will probably also reread some Poe this month, and I generally read A Christmas Carol in December. I can't think of any other seasonal staples.

I did like Ella Minnow Pea: A Novel in Letters, I think it came close to being picked for our book club twice but always was edged out by a vote or two. It was interesting how it took a silly idea and managed to create a pretty alarming dystopia out of it.

It has been a busy week here, but I did finish The Bone Clocks, which I really enjoyed. It's definitely one that sticks with you and gives you a lot to think about. I'm really glad I read it - I'd already finished Slade House for IRL Book Club #1 before they officially picked it, so I decided to read it because it was related. They are completely different types of books, but they really do fit together, and the Bone Clocks made me appreciate Slade House much more.

After all that, I wanted something cheesy and Halloweeny, so I picked one from my TBR with a promising (on that front) title that I knew nothing else about - Wyrms. I can't even remember how it ended up on my TBR, but it is not at all what I expected. It's actually a really engaging quest/adventure type story, even if the cover of my copy from the 1980's looks like some kind of 50's pulp monster p*rn -Wyrms. I'm about 1/3 through, and taking my time because of having a lot going on outside of reading is actually kind of nice, since it gives me time to think about what happens in between chapters.

I've also been listening to another one of the audible freebies I picked up earlier in the year - this one is a very cute kids' book, The Flying Flamingo Sisters. The style of it is reminiscent of Rocky and Bullwinkle, so adults who like that (I do!) will always enjoy it. I'm about 3/4 through it - it's only just over 2 hours long.

QOTW: I don't really try to read seasonally anymore (aside from my current attempt, which turned out to be completely unrelated to Halloween in any way) - like Sheri, my library holds never really line up. But my book clubs sometimes pick seasonal things (that's the reason for Slade House this month, in fact), which is nice.

Just one finish this week: Trainspotting. It's a bit of an exhausting read, both for the Scottish dialect I had to "read out loud" in my head to grasp, and for the utterly depressing lives of the characters. In a lot of ways, it reminded me of The Dirt: Confessions of the World's Most Notorious Rock Band, except without an out for most of the characters. Maybe it's because I loved one of these kinds of guys when I was young, and the bitter disappointment is easy to recall. In any case, I used it for the Gryffindor/Hogwarts/set in Scotland prompt, completing the Gryffindor house of prompts.

56/60

So that brings me to the last four prompts of my main challenge, and it looks like I'm headed east, since three of the four books I've got lined up are set in Asia or written by an East Asian author. I also have a "set in prehistory (BC)" prompt. My brain itches at the notion that BC = prehistory. But I don't want to read The Clan of the Cave Bear, and none of the libraries I frequent has Raptor Red, so I'm a bit stuck.

QOTW: Other than an annual read of How the Grinch Stole Christmas!, I can't think of any seasonal reading I do. Other than to me, Halloween is a year-round state of mind :D

The Spirit and the Skull is set in Paleolithic Alaska, if that one's available to you. (Don't go in expecting a mystery novel like I did; it's more on the magical realism side.)