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Hi everyone,

Hope everyone is doing well. Been a kind of roller coaster week, and feeling a looming dread as next Tuesday approaches. Putting a kind of damper on any Halloween excitement, especially as we're not even giving out candy this year. Michigan has been spiking back into orange levels of cases, local village has strongly advised against traditional trick or treating. They said people could put gift bags on a table at the end of the drive, but I don't want to have to baby sit a table. And why spend money on candy and go to the effort of putting up a table if I don't even get the benefit of seeing cute costumes and stuff? Will probably just watch rocky horror in the basement or something.

I will be putting up questions for Addie LaRue soon, so keep an eye out for those!

This week I finished:

The Great Glowing Coils of the Universe - i'd already listened to all of nightvale, (except maybe the most recent episode, i'm always a little behind) but it was nice revisiting old ones. There were lots of plot points i'd forgotten.

Nowhere Men, Vol. 1: Fates Worse Than Death - this was just ok. Not in any rush to finish. Kind of tired about sci fi about men's hubris.

The Invisible Life of Addie LaRue Finished this for the book club read, I'll save more discussion for the group, but i'll just say I LOVED it so much. It was a book that I just knew would be a favorite as I read it, and it didn't disappoint in the end, for me. used it for fall reading challenge, book published in October or November.

Calling My Name - coming of age story, written in a kind of unusual lyrical style. It wasn't outright poetry like Poet X, but kind of had a similar vibe. Used it for fall reading challenge, book with Black joy.

Currently reading:

I'm Still Here: Black Dignity in a World Made for Whiteness - short read, should be done soon. Always hard to read stuff like this, but important to do so. It's not as emotionally devastating as some, but really calls out how much of just general white middle class behavior/society is just built on inherent unacknowledged racism and white supremacy.

QOTW:

Do you participate in the Å·±¦ÓéÀÖ Choice Awards? What are your thoughts on the first round this year?

I was pleasantly surprised how many I'd read this year, and also surprised that a lot of them were in general fiction instead of science fiction. However some of that is based on the libraries being closed for so much of this year, a lot of the sci-fi ones were on my want to read list but library hasn't gotten them digitally yet. I did go the real library once a few weeks ago, and that's how I got two of the titles read, but a lot of others I just have recommendations on and havent' felt ambitious enough to go make another trip.

I figure goodreads choice awards are more popularity contests than anything else, so I'll vote in any category that I read a book in, if I liked that book, even if I hadn't read the others. Had trouble with Fantasy this year since I adored both The City we Became and The Invisible Life of Addie LaRue. I ended up going with The City We Became, but it was a close call.

I finished Children of Blood and Bone the other day, and I wavered between three and four stars. I think I ended up deciding on three. I liked it, and I really loved the setting, but it fell into too many common YA tropes. I did like the surprise ending and I'm interested enough to read the next book, but I won't be racing out to get my hands on it immediately.

I then picked up something a little different from what I usually read, Perfect Little World by Kevin Wilson. I honestly can't remember where I read about this book - it's an author I hadn't heard of, and it's not my usual genre, but I read a blurb somewhere and was interested enough to request the eBook from my library. I ended up reading it in two days. The writing was really lovely, the situation was interesting, and I liked the way that the main character developed over the course of the book (which takes place over a ten-year time span). I found the ending somewhat predictable and unsatisfying, but I'm still glad I read it and I would gladly read another by the same author.

Still working on Mort with the kiddo (the nice thing about reading out loud to him is that I can skip over some of the more...adult...commentary and not have to explain it). He's loving it and we're likely to pick up Reaper Man next!

QOTW: I haven't looked at the lists yet this year, but I will when I'm done writing this! I, too, consider them more of a popularity contest than anything else, and I pretty much do the same thing you do, Shari. If I liked a book, I'll vote for it.

I'm with you, Sheri - trick or treat is tonight here (yep, that's how we roll in the C-bus, it's never on a weekend because of football, and it is strictly from 6-8pm), and it has been POURING all day. I made 40 little baggies with a mystery prize (they sell bags of them at Kroger every year) and candy, and I have skeleton hand tongs to hand them out if anyone comes. I feel like anyone who goes out in this deserves to get something, but cases are spiking here, too, so I'm not expecting a huge turnout. We usually get 100+, so I figured 40 would be safe given the situation, but I've got extras of everything just in case. Are you watching the Rocky Horror reunion on Saturday night? I'm looking forward to that - Tim Curry never does ANYTHING public anymore, so this is quite the occasion!

On the book front, I checked in so late for last week that not much has changed since then - I'm now over halfway through The Engines of God and still enjoying it, even if some of the things the characters do make you wonder if they don't have scifi or horror movies in the future because they're pretty much like those kids in the commercial that run away from the running car and hide in the garage behind the chainsaws.

I've also listened to more of Ghostsitter - A Crazy Inheritance, which has really made me appreciate all of the well-translated things I've read and listened to over the years, since this seems to be a pretty good example of what happens when you half-ass it. I can see why the series is popular with German kids, since some of the translation is so literal that you can imagine how the original phrasing went - it's got cool characters, humor, and (by their standards) lots of action - but the crappy translation makes it hard to follow and clunky. Since it was free and the time I've spent listening to it would otherwise have been filled with NPR, I'm not terribly put out - but I definitely wouldn't advocate spending money on it.

QOTW: I hardly ever get around to reading things when they're released, so I only vote in the goodreads choice if an author I like specifically requests it. I looked at the list, and there's one on there that one of my book clubs is reading next month, and one that I won a copy of earlier in the year but haven't read yet - and other than that I hadn't even heard of most of them.

I have next week off from work, which is good, because I don't think I'd be able to focus at all Tuesday/Wednesday. We do have Halloween candy just in case, but we never really get trick-or-treaters anyway. Definitely not expecting any this year.

Still working my way through Return of the Thief, which I'm really enjoying so far. I do wish I'd reread at least the last book now, though, because it's been several years and I've forgotten some of the minor characters. Maybe in the next year or two, I'll do a full series reread again.

QOTW: I usually vote on the rare occasion that I've actually read something or a favorite author is on the list. In the first round, I like to write in books that I loved that fit the criteria, even if there's probably no hope. I've seen write-in's get picked up for the final round before.

I will say, it's always struck me as odd to do a best books of the year vote like this with 2 months left to go in the year and many books yet to come out. It's like, anything coming out in November or December winds up in this no man's land where they're not eligible for this year's or next year's awards. I'd much prefer Å·±¦ÓéÀÖ do this in January 2021 for 2020, etc.

I was considering the reunion, might! Have to look the link up again, and the timing.

I agree about the award timing! I remember being annoyed starless sea was on the voting list when it was out for maybe 2 days? Who could legit have read it, aside from people with an arc? Nothing against the book, just seems weird to have a book running that would either a) be voted for because people liked night circus or b) be skipped because it wasn’t read yet

Work has battered me this week, so no finishes, although I am about a quarter of the way into The Institute. Still waiting to see how the first part connects to the main plot.

Although I'm just a neighbour to the north, I don't think I'll be able to do anything plugged in on Tuesday, particularly since a decision is not super likely. So I might choose to dive headfirst into a book, if I've finished all the work I still have left.

QOTW: Like Megan, I rarely read things as soon as they come out, so books I've read are few and far between when it comes to these awards. I'll admit to voting for Allie Brosh's new tome, even though I haven't gotten my grubby little hands on it yet. Everything about her return to the public eye has kept that wonderful whimsy that made her first book so great, so I feel comfortable making a few general assumptions about this one.

Just wanted to pop in to say I put questions up for the Invisible Life of Addie LaRue for those who had read it already :)

I'm afraid I'm on a very long library waiting list at the moment! :(

No worries! I think i managed to luck out and request it early enough to be pretty high on the wait list when they bought it. Otherwise I'd be on a several week wait too. It's the book through the end of the year, and even if we pick another, I'm going to leave questions open like I always do. Good thing about goodreads book clubs, you don't all have to finish at the same time :) That is why I booked it on trying to get questions done. I sent the hold back, since i know it's super popular. Sometimes i'm lazy about returning early, but if i know it's a huge list I try to send back as soon as I'm done.

Since I know you were all waiting with bated breath for an update - we had 28 trick or treaters last night, which is about 1/3 of what we usually get - considering it had been pouring all day (and continued through the evening) and there is a pandemic, that was more than I really expected - but the desire to take pictures with the inflatable skeleton unicorn in our yard apparently outweighed other issues for most families. :)

Also, for anyone interested in the Rocky Horror stream, which is at 10e/9c tomorrow (Halloween) night - the signup link is .

I normally do the costume thing for a Halloween party that's a week or two before the actual holiday, and I live in a building that doesn't get trick-or-treaters, so my normal Halloween is usually some sort of pumpkin-based dinner and thematically appropriate music/movie. I'm looking forward to doing that before being entirely consumed by the electoral dread.

In honor of Spooky Week I started with The Haunting of Hill House. It was good, more on the paranormal side than the entirely psychological We Have Always Lived In the Castle. I kind of liked the Hill House plot more, but Merricat's first-person narration in Castle was more compelling, so I'm not quite sure which one I'd say is best. The beginning of the book put me in mind of "The Secret Life of Walter Mitty", and then when I went back and read the introduction, Guillermo del Toro did compare Jackson's prose to Thurber's. If I were reading this for a class, I would write a paper about how patriarchy makes resorting to daydreams to escape a frustrated life pathetic if it's a man and horrific if it's a woman. I don't know that I actually believe that, but I'm pretty sure I could get an A on it.

One of the characters in Hill House mentions The Canterville Ghost, so I grabbed that from Gutenberg. I may have read it at some point before (possibly in a collection of Wilde that I apparently forgot to log and now cannot identify to check, urgh), but I didn't remember it that well. It's a funny ghost story, suitably thematic without being actually scary, which can be handy sometimes. I don't think I could fully appreciate the satire of Americans from this modern vantage; we were known for liking products, I guess?

The most recent free Tor book was The Haunting of Tram Car 015, so it seemed like that ought to round out the week. It's a very inventive setting, a fantasy steampunk Cairo, with good worldbuilding for a short novella. It touched on interesting topics like women's and AI rights. I didn't love it, but I don't think it's the book's fault; based on a fairly small sample size, steampunk just seems not to be my cuppa. If it's yours, but you get tired of foggy ol' London, maybe try this author.

QOTW: I'm with Megan in that I don't read many new books but did vote because an author mentioned it on Twitter. While I was doing that, I skimmed over the other categories and went ahead and voted for one other book I'd read. I agree that it doesn't seem like anyone could possibly have read all the listed books, so I didn't feel bad about not being a fully informed voter. I didn't realize they don't extend eligibility for late releases into the next year - how silly.

I too am on a long wait list for Addie LaRue. Also although my town is encouraging and holding trick-or-treating as usual this year (because they prefer people be outside instead of replacing it with parties in houses) we rarely get any kids at our house. So we will not have our lights on. And today we got 5 inches of snow so it will be messy no matter what.

This week I finished listening to Cibola Burn. I enjoyed it. I am going to take a break from the Expanse books for a bit. I've caught up with where the TV series is too.

After finishing that I started listening to The Last Emperox. Of course, like pretty much every John Scalzi book, it is narrated by Wil Wheaton. This is going to feel like a super quick romp I think because it is only 8 hours long, compared to about 20 for the Expanse books. It is the 3rd book in The Interdependency series.

I'm also still reading Humble Pi: A Comedy of Maths Errors. The content is interesting. The real copy does not look like the cover and subtitle here on GR. Mine is "When Math Goes Wrong in the Real World" because most of the errors are not comedic, but have real and sometimes fatal ramifications.

Got my Halloween reads in (some are more related to the holiday than others):
(side note - all of these are re-reads, most of them have been read to death)
A Study in Emerald - I adore this! One of the best Sherlockian "fan-fictions" (Gaiman's words, not mine) ever. That it's beautifully also woven in with Lovecraftian monsters is a bonus.

Hunter - it has all sorts of evil fairies and monsters. I say it counts for Halloween. Also, the closest thing to dystopian fiction that I like.

Coraline - "Don't go through the door." I remember seeing that Gaiman had written a children's book and been worried that it wasn't going to be good. I worried for nothing!

Dracula - much trouble comes from keeping quiet to protect people for their own good. Several of these characters need to be slapped upside the head.

The Wee Free Men - literally about witches and fairies. If you want an easy entry into Discworld, I recommend this or Going Postal.

Click-Clack the Rattlebag - celebrating All Hallows Read, which Gaiman made up because he likes writing horror books

A Night in the Lonesome October - My all-time favorite Zelazny work. It manages to allude to various Victorian and silver screen monsters and still be its own work.

Witch Week - I'd be hard pressed to pick a favorite by Jones, but this is a top contender! Also includes the hilarious line (about a flying mop), "Set off at top wallow."

And Then There Were None - I must have previously read a much older printing of this book, because this edition (from 2013) replaced the offensive word with "soldier." And it works very well! I tend to prefer Christie's short stories to her novels because she's brilliant at the crime and doesn't care about people having growth and development.

Alexa wrote: "The Wee Free Men - literally about witches and fairies. If you want an easy entry into Discworld, I recommend this or Going Postal.

My son was a Feegle for Halloween! :)

I’m reading going postal right now haha

Shel wrote: "Alexa wrote: "The Wee Free Men - literally about witches and fairies. If you want an easy entry into Discworld, I recommend this or Going Postal.

My son was a Feegle for Halloween! :)"

Brilliant! "Crivvens!"

Sheri wrote: "I’m reading going postal right now haha"

Such a good book!