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Hello Everyone,

I've been traveling, some work some pleasure and very busy so it has been a few weeks since I've checked in. I hope you're all doing well. Spring is here in the northern hemisphere! Hurray!

Since I last checked in, I finished Rock Paper Scissors for neighborhood book club. It was engaging and pretty good. For a thriller, it had minor annoyances to keep "the secret" that then weren't held to after as a way to mislead. There were a few things that definitely surprised me though.

I also finished Coming Home. This was part of Amazon free kindle romances. It was fine. It was good enough to finish. I don't care enough (and have a lot of other free ones) that I won't continue the series most likely.

I also finished another free romance Trouble Me. Again, it was okay enough to finish and keep reading. These have been perfect for not too deep, very light reading.

Another free story I'm very into at the moment is Where the Forest Meets the Stars. This is a free kindle sci-fi book that is very good so far. I am about 40% of the way done. My husband read it and actually cried at the end so I'm bracing myself a bit.

I'm a bit more than halfway through the selection book Killers of a Certain Age. I double-dipped because I also convinced my neighborhood book club to read it for this month too! I am enjoying it. My recent travels means I haven't been walking alone enough to just get it done.

QOTW:
(Making it up just because my husband and I were discussing it yesterday)
Have you noticed that it seems like so many books lately are part of a series? It seems like everything coming out is #1. Sometimes I really want to read a story and walk away and go on to something else. Is it a marketing ploy? Is it some how-to at writer's conferences? It just seems so prevalent now.

I won't even talk about books that do that by abruptly ending in the middle of some climactic action. Those get me annoyed and I won't read the next one. That recently happened with one of the free Amazon romances.

Happy Thursday!

Finished:
Redsight by Meredith Mooring - 2 stars - for PopSugar's book by a blind or visually impaired author. I wished I had enjoyed this more. Even handwaving away the nonsensical science as magic, I found it kind of disjointed and the characters were bland. I think the author was trying too hard to capture the feel of Tamsyn Muir's Locked Tomb series, with the whole space nuns who are powered by blood. But I didn't really connect to any of the characters and I pretty much powered through it to finish the prompt. It ended really abruptly, too.

The Imposition of Unnecessary Obstacles by Malka Ann Older - 4 stars - for PopSugar's a book set in the future. This series is basically a sci-fi cozy mystery series. This was going to be a solid 3 stars until about 40% in, and then it really picked up and held my attention.

Comics/manga:
Natsume's Book of Friends, Vol. 29
Akane-banashi, Vol. 4
The Ancient Magus' Bride Vol. 19
The Apothecary Diaries 11
The King’s Beast, Vol. 12
Oshi No Ko , Vol. 3
Oshi No Ko , Vol. 4
Horimiya, Vol. 4
Horimiya, Vol. 5
Horimiya, Vol. 6
Horimiya, Vol. 7
Horimiya, Vol. 8
Persona 5, Vol. 11

Currently reading:
Call Us What We Carry: Poems by Amanda Gorman

Braiding Sweetgrass: Indigenous Wisdom, Scientific Knowledge and the Teachings of Plants by Robin Wall Kimmerer - PopSugar's nonfiction book about Indigenous people

Chaos Choreography by Seanan McGuire - according to the series wiki, Verity is 24 in this book, so using this for PopSugar's book about a 24-year-old prompt. Plus it helps me to read a fiction book alongside nonfiction.

Upcoming/Planned:
Future Tense: How We Made Artificial Intelligence—and How It Will Change Everything by Martha Brockenbrough for PopSugar's book that came out in a year that ends with "24" (2024)

A Tempest of Tea by Hafsah Faizal - not for a challenge (yet)

QOTW:
I definitely think it's a marketing thing on the part of publishers. I agree, I don't like cliffhangers or books ending abruptly to get you to buy the next one. Even within a series, I believe each book should tell a complete story, even if you need the context of the earlier books to understand character developments/history/etc.

I do enjoy a solid standalone, or even series books that can stand alone. But I also enjoy a series, especially if they're characters I really like.

From a writer standpoint, although I'm not published... sometimes I just don't want to let my characters go. I find I have more stories to tell with them, and more things I want to develop.

Vacation last week so finished a bunch, including audiobook of The Mysterious Benedict Society which I first enjoyed reading with kidbots when it first came out.
I still loved it, but Fractured Fables: Containing A Spindle Splintered and A Mirror Mended is not a new book in the series by Alix E. Harrow, but the last two novellas (that I already own) issued as a paperback. I had preordered it expecting a new book and not a reissue, so slightly disappointing. I left it with the friend I was visiting for her to try.
Also found author Dennis E Taylor using the prompt to find an author using literature-map.com, as being similar to John Scalzi. Read the first of a trilogy and very much enjoyed: We are Legion (We are Bob). Good job, literature-map!
I agree that it seems to be a strategy to lure you in with a free book #1 to make you buy the rest. I got the free # 0.5 novella in this series, liked the character, and bought Return to Hoodoo. I also liked it, but she left another cliffhanger. I read almost exclusively mysteries my adult life because they always had a satisfying ending even if characters continued in the next book. I'm slightly annoyed by fantasy writers leaving me hanging. I think mystery series have been around for awhile, but maybe romance/fantasy is jumping on board with that strategy.

Killers of a Certain Age - I will get myself together and post in the book club eventually.

The Dish: The Lives and Labor Behind One Plate of Food - This is a book about all the people involved in producing a specific dish (including the ingredients) served at a relatively swanky restaurant. It was interesting, but if there was an organizing principle, I couldn't figure it out. It seemed like it jumped around randomly.

The Missing Page - I may have liked this sequel mystery/romance more than the first book, because it had less spy stuff and more straightforward mystery, and the relationship was more established. I would happily read another if the author wanted to write one.

Buttermilk Graffiti: A Chef’s Journey to Discover America’s New Melting-Pot Cuisine - This was the library's "community read" for this month, and if I had realized that sooner, I wouldn't have read another food book right before it. I don't know if I was just in a bad mood, but I didn't really like this. I was bothered by the author's frequent research method of showing up somewhere and offending the locals. He just seemed obnoxious sometimes.

QOTW: Oh I am so with you on the cliffhangers, Susan! Absolutely will put me off reading the next one, even if I might otherwise have done so. I agree with Kathy about mystery series, where they're generally sufficiently self-contained to read alone or out of order, which makes me more likely to read a series if I like the writing/characters/whatever.

TGIF! Been a bit busy lately - my son's bar mitzvah is tomorrow so I've been in planning mode and not so much reading mode. I don't think I've read more than 20 pages this week. But I had some good reads last week:

The Jinn-Bot of Shantiport by Samit Basu: this was a lot of fun. Aladdin-inspired SF (including a robotic monkey and a powerful bit of technology capable of granting three wishes to its user).

Miss Moriarty, I Presume? by Sherry Thomas: Lady Sherlock book 6. Just as much fun as the others. Given the way this one ended, I can't wait to see where the next book goes.

The 7 1/2 Deaths of Evelyn Hardcastle by Stuart Turton: book recommended by other people doing the challenge - a bunch of folks had mentioned this over on the Book Nerds FB page and OMG, it blew my mind. I agree with what the others said about it being best to go into it with no expectations or information, so I won't say anything else except to recommend it.

I started The Seven Moons of Maali Almeida but am having a hard time getting into it (the aforementioned 20 pages). I know that I want to get back to it at some point but my brain is so fried at the moment that I think I might bring it back to the library and try again another time when my brain is working better.

QOTW: I'm of two minds about long series. I absolutely LOVE a big epic series with a lot of meat to it ... as long as it's something that the author clearly planned out, with a big story arc that all comes together at the end. But sometimes an author just seems to have success with characters and decides to keep writing new books with them that are more episodic, and those are usually not as good. I can live with a good cliffhanger if it's an unexpected plot twist, but I hate it when an author just stops in the middle of a scene and leaves the reader hanging.