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Hi all,

Book club: The book club selection was The Woman They Could Not Silence: One Woman, Her Incredible Fight for Freedom, and the Men Who Tried to Make Her Disappear, I put up a pre reading thread and a final thoughts thread. There's a long wait list for both digital and audio book for my library, and I don't know if I'll get over there soon to try to get a print copy. If anyone who finished it wants to look up some questions to get the discussion going, feel free! It might take me a while.

Have some time so I'll actually make a post this week! It's certainly been another week. Had a nice Easter weekend. But Monday, we noticed a weird burning smell, and then our carbon monoxide alarm briefly went off, so we flung open windows, put cats in carriers and evacuated while calling 911. Luckily it was NOT a gas leak. But it was the main motor of our furnace burning out. And we'd already replaced a different motor and some other fan in the furnace earlier this year. So came to the reluctant conclusion that it was time to replace the whole thing, on top of our septic replacement. While it was snowing. Was a cold few days. Luckily yesterday they were able to squeeze us in to at least get enough of the new furnace in to get the heat going, and they'll finish the rest on Monday. (AC/humidifier/thermostat were all old so we're just gutting the whole thing while we're at it. Might as well rip the band aid off rather than trying to save some money and just have more stuff falling apart and potentially ruining the new stuff we just replaced). Of course by this weekend it'll be in the 70s, but the house was SO COLD up until the point it was working yesterday.

I'm about ready to just cancel the rest of this year and skip to 2023 and see if it goes better.

So ive been reading:

Legends & Lattes - i did end up really loving this, in spite of my distaste for coffee. Just an all around really cute story. I really need him to write more, I MUST know the story behind Darius, and his chess game and apparent many lives? circular life? I don't even know, but I must!

Mambo in Chinatown - i really enjoyed this one! I always liked dancing, and i did do a few ballroom lessons in a studio very like the one mentioned in this, through a groupon. We simply couldn't' afford the absolutely ridiculous cost of the private lessons, and they STRONGLY push you towards those and out of group as fast as they can. They also strongly push you towards competitions which isn't what we wanted. We just wanted to dance for fun. But it was still cool to revisit the dance scene, and I really like the author's writing. Reading about poverty and racism is always hard, but I think she does a good job at handling it in a very humane and delicate way that isn't just heavy and depressing to the point of being difficult to get through.

Star Mother - this was interesting. I liked it, didn't love it. Some parts of the lore never really seemed to quite click together for me. But overall, was interesting. Might eventually read the next one, but didn't just leave me dying for more.

Currently reading:

The Only Good Indians - I don't know if I don't like this, or just am not in the mood for this. Been slogging through this for over a week, keep setting it down to read other stuff. I keep hearing great things, so I do want to finish. So I'll keep poking at it and finish eventually.

Parachutes - cute YA so far

Terminal Uprising - audio book, liking it so far. Hopefully can find the new one once it's out, hoopla can be slow for new releases.

QOTW:

I'll borrow a question from Popsugar:

Do you ever read or wish you could read spin offs or continuations of movies or tv series in novelizations/graphic novels?

I do sometimes. I read the Buffy graphic novels that are sometimes reboots, sometimes continuations or spinoffs, there were some firefly contiuations/spin offs, my little pony continuations, steven univers etc. Usually not as much with novelization.

I did like the Mass Effect video game novels. At least the first 3 by Drew Karapasyan. I picked up the Andromeda one by NK Jemisen, haven't read it yet but I'll get to it eventually.

Oh no, Sheri! That sounds like a nightmare. :( I hope the installation goes well, at least.

This week I just finished a few mangas:
Queen's Quality, Vol. 14
Spy x Family, Vol. 7
Kaguya-sama: Love Is War, Vol. 22

I'm currently reading Fevered Star. Of course, work just picked up a bit so I'm not getting to read it as much as I want. I'm enjoying it so far. I didn't re-read Black Sun first, but it's coming back to me as I read the sequel.

QOTW:
I think that's what fanfiction is for! :D Although I don't actually read a lot of fanfic anymore, to be honest.

I do sometimes read media tie-ins or continuations. I read a lot of the Star Wars novels, and I've read some comics from other properties, like Dragon Age and Firefly.

Oy, Sheri, what a pain. :(

I've not done much reading this week and am still on The Uplift War. I've read it before, and loved it, and am still loving it, and at the same time am having a hard time getting motivated to pick it up. I think it probably has nothing to do with the book and more to do with mental exhaustion in general.

QOTW: Although I've definitely wished that some favorite books/movies/series went on longer, I've never really sought out other media spinoffs. I think when I've fallen in love with a particular world in one medium that I'll find it unsatisfying in a different medium. I'm not sure why. Maybe I'd enjoy it if I tried? I just never cared enough to find out...

{{hugs Sheri}}

still working on Three Musketeers.
i have books i need to put purchase suggestions in to the library for.

QotW: I've really only read (and own) all the Supernatural books! and the Forever Knight books, too! (including the fan-published one!) but while I've seen spin-off books from other shows i watched, i never read any of them, and have no idea why......

I missed the last update; the last two weeks were kind of a lot at work, but I am on vacation this week, woo!
The theme of the last few books I read seems to be "eh."

Lying for Money: How Legendary Frauds Reveal the Workings of Our World - This had a lot of jokes and was entertaining in that way, but the descriptions of the frauds were sometimes vague; the author states a few times that the details get very technical, and I probably wouldn't have understood everything if he did get into the weeds, but I still felt like I didn't quite get it when there was so much glossed over.

How Y'all Doing?: Misadventures and Mischief from a Life Well Lived - I sometimes enjoy B-list memoirs, and there were some cute stories in this (one involves Carrie Fisher calling her mom, who then called Leslie Jordan's mom), but I think they would have been more entertaining if performed as in the one-man show frequently referenced. Maybe if you like audiobooks that would be the way to go.

The Threefold Cord - This had been on my want-to-read for a long time, and I went through the library catalog again and found it had been added to Hoopla. When I read the blurb I realized why I had added it in the first place: the first murder victim in the book is a budgie. The prose was fairly pedestrian and there was minimal budgie content (although it was properly avenged!), so I don't think I'll seek out more of this author.

It's Earth Day, Cookie Monster! - For completeness, I will include this book that was on Hoopla's Earth Day list. I found the title misleading; it's facts about Earth Day with some Sesame Street character "talking heads" included, Cookie Monster being featured perhaps slightly more often than others but not enough to justify putting his name on it.

QOTW: I like the Death in Paradise books, but they are written by the show's creator and read like novelizations of unused scripts (I assume they aren't, but they easily could be). I've read one or two ST:TOS books and would probably read more if I were more a fan of the series, although I understand some authors are better than others. I used to wish for more content involving the show Lewis (there wasn't even much fanfic, mostly ships I did not like) but one of the actors milkshake ducked and put me off it. I can't think of anything else in film/TV that interests me that much.

Sheri good luck to you in all the stuff you have to get through.

This week I finished The Lincoln Highway for my neighborhood book club. I thought this was only okay. Others in the group enjoyed it more. The story itself was okay. I think the beginning of the story was a bait and switch where the author set your expectations that they're doing one thing and it turns into a completely different story and they never do it.

I also finished Scratching the Woodchuck: Nature on an Amish Farm. This was a collection of short essays. It was enjoyable enough bedtime reading. Admittedly it often helped me just doze off to sleep. Easy to stop any time. It was well-timed for Earth Day and might motivate me to pay more attention to the nature around me. I live in a rural-ish suburb with a lot of woods around me and I could keep track of nature I see regularly.

QOTW: I don't watch that much film/TV. Watching The Expanse on TV definitely was the only way I read the books. Also over pandemic I watched Virgin River on Netflix which I think is based on a romance novel although I never read it.