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Hi everyone,

Been an uneventful week this week, mostly just a lot of rain. Going to check out the Jim Henson puppet exhibit at a museum this weekend, and went to the Detroit Institute of Art last weekend. Nice to be able to do things, even if I'm still not very comfortable in crowds.

Book Club

Looks like Project Hail Mary won the poll by several votes. Just so happens my hold just came up, so I should be able to get to it shortly.

I'm going to change the format to what we discussed a couple weeks ago, I have the pre-reading thread up now. Once I finish up, I'll make a finished reading thread, with some overall questions to spark discussion, rather than the multiple posts for different sections. Feel free to give your pre-reading thoughts! For those who read it already, I'll try to get the finished reading post up soon.

This week I finished:

Act Your Age, Eve Brown - this was a fun romance, I enjoyed the Brown sisters. I'll have to check out her other books. I am not a huge romance person, but they're nice brain breaks to go in between heavy reads. Counted it for Read Harder fat-positive romance, and Book nerds book where you'd like to be friends with the main character.

Bite Me If You Can - another fluff read because I had a migraine, couldn't concentrate on my other book.

Currently reading:

Queen of the Conquered - taking me a while to get through this. It's not BAD per se, it's just kind of slow and it doesn't make me look forward to reading. Reminds me a bit of The Traitor Baru Cormorant. Frankly I think I just don't have patience for political maneuvering in books, whether they are fantasy or sci fi, or how diverse the cast is or what the power dynamics are. I generally want either relationships to explore, or action. Reading about people murdering each other for power just....isn't my thing. Looking at you too, Game of Thrones. It'll be my book that starts with Q, X, or Z for popsugar.

Drawing a blank for a question of the week this week. If anyone has something, feel free to ask! if anyone has ideas, feel free to message me and I'll use them in the future. I'm at the tail end of my work day, if I think of something later I can come back and add it.

This was our first week with our hybrid back to the office plan - 2 days a week in the office, the rest at home. So far, so good, except there was a ton of food at our office space as part of the welcome back festivities, which always throws me off my meal plans! (lol)

I have a few finishes to report this week. Work's been slow, so that means more time to read during the workday.

I finished The Bird King, my Popsugar book by a Muslim-American author. It was beautifully written. It was a historical fantasy set in Granada, the last emirate of Muslim Spain. I liked it, but it got a little odd toward the end.

Any Way the Wind Blows, the last book in Rainbow Rowell's Simon Snow trilogy. Simon Snow started as a parody of Harry Potter in Rowell's Fangirl, and people liked it so much, she wound up spinning a full-blown series out it. I used this for my book by an author who shares your zodiac sign (Pisces).

Project Hail Mary - no spoilers since I know it's the new book club pick, but I really loved it. No prompt (that I can think of, anyway).

Currently reading: I'm Not Dying with You Tonight - using this as my Popsugar book that's set mostly outdoors. It's not bad so far. It's a really quick read.

I had another non-reading week last week, this time because I had an extended bout of vertigo and couldn't focus on a page. :( A few days of Epley Maneuvers and it's mostly gone now.

I had started The Long Earth before the vertigo began, but I was having a hard time getting into it so I'm not going to go back. Instead I've just started The Dark Forest, book two of the Remembrance of Earth's Past trilogy, which I'm reading along with my other Å·±¦ÓéÀÖ group.

Kiddo and I are almost finished with The Blood of Olympus and will have to decide what to read next!

I, too, have started on the "two days in the office" plan. I expect this to decrease my reading time slightly.

This week I read Kindred: Neanderthal Life, Love, Death and Art. I was a little disappointed in this one. A bit of it was due to the author (her waxing poetic didn't really work for me, and she seemed intent on debunking a "Neanderthals as cartoon cavemen" idea that I don't really think I held), but mostly it seems like we just don't have a lot of information. The answers to the most interesting questions are still "we don't know." Which is reasonable, but doesn't make for such a compelling read.

Last week I had two finishes. First I finished reading The Anthropocene Reviewed. It is a book of essays from John Green's podcast, probably with some updates. I read the whole book with his voice in my head since I watch him frequently on vlogbrother videos. The book was okay. The topics were really random and while I don't know what I was expecting, this book was not really what I was expecting. Quick and easy to read and easy to skip a page or two on a topic I'm not interested in.

The other finish was my audiobook Agent to the Stars. It is a John Scalzi book. I only knew when I started it that it was a standalone Scalzi book. I did not know it was his first book ever! That explains the slightly unexpected tangents into side topics that happened once or twice. But overall it was a typical Scalzi book. It was enjoyable and listening to Wil Wheaton is always a pleasure.

I recently "joined" (maybe) two book clubs in my town. So my new books are the ones for those clubs that are meeting in another week and a half. We'll see if I finish and/or participate in those. Anyway the book I'm physically reading is The Alice Network. It is interesting so far and I never would have picked it up on my own.

The other book I listening to because it is the only way I can possibly get through both books. That is A Man Called Ove. While I'm only about 1/3 of the way through it, mostly I'm finding Ove an annoying character. It has really good reviews so we'll see if it improves. But so far I'm not overly impressed. It didn't help that it irritated me right from the get-go.

Hello! Hope everyone is having a great weekend.

I suspect my updates are going to be a bit boring for a while now, as I've decided I'm finally going to get around to reading Ulysses. It fits the banned book prompt for book nerds, and I've been needing something to nudge me into reading it as it's always just seemed a bit daunting. I don't typically get along well with stream of consciousness, and this promises to be a rather large volume of that, but it's such a classic that I want to know what the big deal is really. Plus, there's got to be something interesting in it for it to have been banned for so long. However, I am finding it hard going and slow, so it's going to take a while. I don't hate it, but it takes a lot of focus and I'm finding I end up having to reread a lot of sections.

I try not to read multiple books at a time if one of them is a bit difficult, as I know I'll just end up leaving it by the wayside otherwise. I'll probably pick up some audiobooks though, since those occupy a different time and space in my life to text books.

i finished Off to Be the Wizard - it's a fun time-travel romp, and I put in a purchase suggestion for the second book, Spell or High Water - and it's already there, ready for pick-up! (which will have to be Tuesday, actually)

I'm currently (and finally) reading Shadowed Steel - I've read all the Chicagoland Vampires books, and Elisa is the Heir to Chicagoland Vampires, so.... :D

I haven't popped in here in ages, but then again, my reading slump continues. I am now officially more than 50% behind my reading goal for the year. Ah well! I've started and stopped a bunch of books that failed to catch my attention, so I may need a graphic novel or a reread to get me back on track.

Recent finishes include:

If It Bleeds. A comfort read. Enjoyed 3/4 stories. I'm a fan of his Holly Gibney character. Used for "author whose name is one syllable" Book Nerds prompt.

The Sandman: The Deluxe Edition Book One. A Xmas present. I bought Death's miniseries when they first came out, but I never quite seemed to figure out the best way into the rest of the Sandman universe. Lovely artwork. Looking forward to the live action version. Used for the "graphic novel" Book Nerds prompt.

D: A Tale of Two Worlds. I haven't had a premise hook me like that in a while. The resolution was a little too tidy for my taste, but that's what you can expect from a middle grade-ish book. Used for the "non-human character" Book Nerds prompt.

The Tattooist of Auschwitz. These reads are never enjoyable, really, but I appreciated this different pathway to survival. Felt horrible for some of the minor characters though, which are supposed to be addressed in the later books. Not sure whether I'll invest the time, though. Used for the "based on a true story" Book Nerds prompt.

25/100.

Doubtful I'll be able to join in on the book club this time around - my libraries are showing hold times of 18 weeks and 6 months+, respectively!

For future questions, how about tips on getting out of an extended reading funk? XD

Daniele I absolutely adore the Sandman books. I might need to re-read again sometime soon! Heads up - I don't know if the extras are the same in the Deluxe editions, but in my edition the foreword of book 9 (The Kindly Ones) has a MAJOR spoiler that had me throwing the book across the room, I was so mad. Skip it and read it afterwards :)

It has been forever since I've checked in - it's been an absolutely insane month on both the work and family fronts, so I just haven't been online. Like others, we're back to the hybrid schedule as of last week - for many of us it will continue that way indefinitely, so I'm excited about the long-term prospect of only coming into the office a few days a week. The days I do come in give me more audiobook time, though, so that's one nice silver lining. :)

At last check-in I had just started I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings for IRL book club #3 - it definitely was better reading it now without someone shouting at me about symbolism than the infinite times through in school. Oddly, nobody else in the book club had read it in school, so it was interesting to hear their perspectives coming in cold.

After that I read The Ten Thousand Doors of January for IRL book club #1 - I enjoyed it MUCH more than Once and Future Witches - it still had the cleverness and intricacy, but much more warmth and depth. Surprisingly, the rest of the group was kind of meh about it, but it's one of the best I've read in a while.

Next was Something in the Water for IRL book club #2 - this one surprised me, because the "mystery" aspect of it was incredibly predictable, but I enjoyed the writing style so much that I didn't care. I kept waiting for the twist that was going to take it in any other direction aside from the obvious, but nope. So I'm not sure I'd recommend it to thriller lovers, but if you like first person POV and don't mind that the character is completely oblivious, then you might also enjoy it.

After that I read The Beauty in Breaking for my online alumni book club. The subject matter was interesting, particularly in light of the additional stresses that have been added to the already difficult world of emergency rooms by the pandemic - and the author is legitimately an accomplished person. But I just have a thing about self-congratulatory autobiographies, especially when they're written by people my age and younger. I would have enjoyed hearing more about some of her coworkers and patients - or even her friends and family, or her own hobbies and interests - but there is this constant and distracting attempt to make everything some grand lesson that she's teaching the reader.

Next up was The House in the Cerulean Sea. It had been on my TBR forever, and I'd heard so many gushingly glowing things about it that I might have gone in with slightly unrealistic expectations. I enjoyed it, and the characters were great, especially the kids - but it wasn't this transcendent experience that people talk about. Maybe I missed something, or maybe I've just read too many similar books (stories about groups of misfit kids forming a found family are not exactly uncharted territory, as much as I love them). It was just a very nice story of that genre.

I'm now reading another that's been on my TBR forever, The Song of Achilles. I think I may have misunderstood what it was going in - I'm about halfway through, and so far it's a very competent updated variation on Mary Renault, but somehow a bit less immersive. I'm going to finish it, because I always do, but it's not one that's hard to put down. I realize it's a different story, but I keep unfavorably (and probably unfairly) comparing it to The Persian Boy, which seems to be kind of what this one is going for in tone. I'm not sure if this one is supposed to be YA - that would explain some of the simplification - but it really just makes me appreciate Mary Renault more. And ya'll know I'm usually a fan of both YA and modern authors over "classics," so that is not exactly a knee-jerk reaction for me!

On the audio front, I cleaned out the last of the old Audible freebies by listening to Agent 355, which has really stuck with me. I don't want to spoil it for anyone who hasn't listened and might someday, so I won't get into the specifics, but it made me think about how we tend to forget that the American Revolution was violent and dangerous and complicated for everyone who was alive and nearby, not just soldiers. And it did a better job of that in two hours than many full-length novels. I will definitely check out more from that author.

Next was A Grown-Up Guide to Dinosaurs, which was good, but not quite as well done as the audio that accompanied the drive-through dinosaur exhibit we went to last month, so it suffered a bit in comparison.

I'm now almost done listening to A Desperate Fortune, which I'm really enjoying. The narrator is excellent - she does all of the accents without going fully over the top, so you always know who is speaking. I'm surprised it works as well as it does as an audiobook, since it is about the translation of a diary, so very writing-based. But I've only got 3 hours left out of 15.5, and I'm not entirely sure how it's all going to wrap up, so it's definitely keeping me engaged.

BTW: Sheri, I hope you enjoyed the Jim Henson exhibit - we saw it down here a couple years ago and will probably get up there to see it before it ends, since we're pretty big muppet fans. We were up there for the 4th of July stuff at the village and were going to get over to the museum to see it then, but got doing village-y things instead. :) Oh, well - another excuse to stop at Packo's on the way up....:)

It was a great exhibit! The village is also really fun, usually we just go there unless it’s a special exhibit at the museum or bad weather. Love just walking around, even!