Å·±¦ÓéÀÖ

Hi all,
This week's been pretty uneventful, but tomorrow's my birthday! Just doing a small gathering of my parents and two other couples. We're all vaxed, and right now i just don't really feel up for doing big groups going out and about. husband and I do some stuff cautiously together, going out to places we like. It's much easier to stay distanced and all that when there's just two of us, though.

I'll probably get a suggestion thread going for next book selection in the next week or so, so start thinking about what you might want to read next!

This week I finished:

The God Dilemma - catching up on comics, seems like this one is done for now. Probably for the best, the second try at it wasn't as strong as the first. Fine with it taking a break for a while, hopefully if it does come back later it'll be with a clearer idea of what they want to do with it.

Training Camp - this is for my popsugar prettiest cover, and book nerds about an athlete. This book is very extra, red flocked cover with gold embossing, red and gold bookmark ribbon, colored illustrations in between sections and at chapter heads, burgundy page edges. It's partially why i got it, that and the bookstore clerk being really enthusiastic. I don't really care about baskeball and knew nothing about Kobe beyond he played. Got it before his death, and also before i had heard any allegations against him, which might have made me not buy it. But at this point I figured I spent the money anyhow, so might as well read it. I did enjoy it, interesting format. Re told the same series of events but through the perspective of 5 different players. I thought it might get repetitive, but the focus was different each time, because the players did their own things at time, were paying attention to different events with more or less focus etc.

The Broken Kingdoms - popsugar book whose author shares your zodiac sign. I did the audio book for it. It was good, but I don't really enjoy this series as much as I do the broken earth books, or the city we became.

Currently reading:

Tipping the Velvet - this will be my popsugar 90s bestseller, liking it so far.

QOTW:

Do you pay attention to Å·±¦ÓéÀÖ Choice awards? If so do you participate in nominating, voting?

I usually don't bother to nominate, it's not often I read something new that has any chance of winning that isnt' already nominated. I usually will go through and vote in categories that I tend to read in. I'll usually skim those nominees and see if any look like something I want to read. I don't pay much attention to the rest, if I don't already read the genre the fact that they're nominated isn't going to make me change my mind. Although sometimes I do find myself having read them just because i'd found them elsewhere and caught my eye or needed them for a reading challenge or whatever.

Happy birthday Sheri!

I'm still adjusting to my school year schedule and have not had a lot of energy to read, but I've managed to make it about 75% of the way through Mine!: How the Hidden Rules of Ownership Control Our Lives. It's exactly what I needed this week - really interesting and keeps me engaged when I'm reading it, but since it's not a narrative there isn't that drive to find out what happens next that would make it hard to put down when I need to.

Also still working on The Hammer of Thor with the kiddo.

QOTW: I don't pay too much attention to the awards, because only a small number of my reads come from work that was published in the current year. That said, I'll glance at the finals and throw a vote in if there's a book that I did read and really loved. And I'll peek at the winners of genres I like to see if I should check them out at some point.

Sounds like a fun birthday! I hope it's a great day.

The Improbable Adventures of Sherlock Holmes - I got this one because I read somewhere about an Anthony Burgess story that sounded good and was included in it. These were stories mostly but not exclusively by SFF authors, with some but not most featuring SFF elements. I thought the average quality was better than most anthologies. Special props to Naomi Novik; I have never read any of her stuff, but she deftly maneuvered not one but two ships, if you know what I mean. It was funny reading all the author bios talking about their upcoming works, like Mary Robinette Kowal's first novel, from over a decade ago.

The Barrakee Mystery - This was very racist. I am used to the "of its time" sort of thing in classic mysteries, but wow. First an Aboriginal Australian is murdered, and the other characters are racist about that. I thought it would improve when the half-Aboriginal detective character showed up, but no, he also had a bunch of racist theories. Then the whole mystery turned out to have a racist origin; it was like a big snowball of racism. I'm sorry that I didn't start with the second book in the series, which is known for inspiring someone to attempt the crime depicted; I imagine it's less racist, but I don't think I'm going to be able to go back to this author.

QOTW: I haven't been regularly using Å·±¦ÓéÀÖ for that long, but last year I basically was in the same boat as above: don't read a lot of new stuff, voted for the one I had enjoyed, looked at the nominees to see if anything sounded good.

Happy birthday, Sheri!

I didn't get a whole lot of reading done this week, since we were on vacation driving down the Oregon coast.

I finished reading Archivist Wasp before we left, which I really enjoyed. It had interesting world building in a sort of paranormal post-apocalyptic setting, This was my Popsugar book about forgetting, since most of the book deals with Wasp (who herself has forgotten a lot of her early life) trying to help a ghost who is trying to remember his life and find the ghost of his old partner in the underworld.

A handful of manga: Knight of the Ice, Vol. 2 through Knight of the Ice, Vol. 5.

I'm currently reading The Golden Compass, which was my pick for bestseller from the 90s. I actually tried to read it back when it first came out and never got into it, but recently we watched and enjoyed the HBO series, so I thought I'd give it another shot. I'm not too far in yet, though.

QOTW: I usually will vote in both rounds and if I read something recent that isn't listed, I'll write it in as a nomination, but I honestly don't put much stock in the Å·±¦ÓéÀÖ awards. They are more of a popularity contest, and I've always thought it was unfair that they happen in October/November, leaving a bunch of releases from the last quarter of the year in limbo. They really should happen in January, for the previous year's new releases.

happy birthday, Sheri!

i finished The Thousandth Floor, and have The Dazzling Heights ready to be picked up from the library.... once I finish with Out of Spite, Out of Mind.

*sigh* someone on my Å·±¦ÓéÀÖ list, on my update page, is reading Doing Time part of The Time Police series, which is a sequel series to The Chronicles of St Mary's Series..... and my library only has the first one of those (there's 13!) some of the comments on Doing Time have indicated that you don't have to read The Chronicles of St Mary's, but it kinda helps with some characters and the wonky time line, but it looks like a fun series. IF i read the first book and IF i like it, that means I'm going to have to request at least another 12 books from the library, and they've made a change recently so that a patron can only request 2 books per month, which means it'll take at least 6 months to read them all. yeesh. so I'm not even gonna.

QOTW: eh, not really. i'll vote for the books that i read though. XD