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We've crossed the halfway point of this awful year. What books are you reading this month to help keep your sanity?

Finished rereading the first four Murderbot diaries. Started this month's pick and also started rereading The Right Stuff. Not sure of the effects on my sanity yet.

Peace Talks and A Beautifully Foolish Endeavor ... you know once they are released.

Currently enjoying Vagabonds by Hao Jingfang.
And still reading lots and lots of short stories and zines until the end of next week.

Currently at 50% in Chosen Ones. Enjoying it.

Started Yokai Attack!: The Japanese Monster Survival Guide. Japan is weird.

On deck: Star Wars, Vol. 2: Showdown on the Smuggler's Moon. I liked Vol. 1.

Mark wrote: "Finished rereading the first four Murderbot diaries. Started this month's pick and also started rereading The Right Stuff. Not sure of the effects on my sanity yet."

You have nowhere to go but up!

Continuing my reads of older SF (two Frank Herberts last month) I grabbed Sundiver. It's ok but feels a little dated stylistically and structurally. But I'm only a few chapters in.

Rick wrote: "Continuing my reads of older SF (two Frank Herberts last month) I grabbed Sundiver. It's ok but feels a little dated stylistically and structurally. But I'm only a few chapters in."

It's been awhile, but my memory says you would be fine skipping Sundiver and going right to Startide Rising.

I just finished Neverwhere. Still not sure why I never read it before. I'm a little ashamed to admit: maybe the title put me off?

I recently got Network Effect from our local bookstore, so I'll be reading that next. Excited!

Thanks, I might do that. It's a library borrow so no $ risked. On Neverwhere - loved that book. Of all the London Below style books, I think it's the best done.

My brain insists that the first few Uplift books are in a shared universe but not direct sequels to each other.

I too will read Peace Talk when it comes, the BOM and sneaking in Legacy of Ghosts , second book in Alicia Wantall- Burke's self published Coraidic Sagas.

Trike wrote: "My brain insists that the first few Uplift books are in a shared universe but not direct sequels to each other."

Huh, interesting. I was aware of the books when they released but never read any.

Finished up Glorious by Benford and Niven. Pedestrian effort. It seems they are jamming in every weird life form and astronomical object they can think of into this book before they die. Most of the plotlines are callbacks to other books like Childhood's End. Large parts are similar to Poul Anderson's Starfarers.

I do love Ramjet style space travel and Big Smart Objects so this book held my interest, but just barely. The authors leaned so hard on stunting that it left me - well, not cold, but just about lukewarm. There's precious little plot. Welp, now I've read the end of the trilogy. There really ought to be another book to tie up loose ends, which actually Anderson did better. I hope they don't do that though. Not sure I could stand another and I'd feel obligated to read it.

John (Taloni) wrote: "Finished up Glorious by Benford and Niven."

Hm, I did not know a third Bowl of Heaven novel had come out. I read the first one so long ago, that I pretty much remember no details, and I was so lukewarm on it anyway, that I never got around to the second one.

^ I thought about doing more details and spoiler-protecting, but realized I didn't care enough to do so. If Niven wants to one-up Ringworld's scale then he can, but it doesn't make that story Ringworld. There's really one hilarious part to Bowl of Heaven which is that it (view spoiler)[plays off the Niven quote that the dinosaurs died out because they didn't have a space program. Well, looks like they did! (hide spoiler)]

The trilogy is okay enough to read when there's nothing else around, but I don't think anyone particularly loves it.

I’m reading Parable of the Sower by Octavia Butler, Permission to Feel by Marc Brackett, and The Near Witch by V. E. Schwab.

John (Taloni) wrote: "^ I thought about doing more details and spoiler-protecting, but realized I didn't care enough to do so. If Niven wants to one-up Ringworld's scale then he can, but it doesn't make that story Ringw..."

Niven’s latest books are like the Star Wars prequels: unnecessary and not very good.

Just finished Montezuma's Daughter and started Stephen F. Hickman's The Lemurian Stone.

Rick wrote: "Trike wrote: "My brain insists that the first few Uplift books are in a shared universe but not direct sequels to each other."

Huh, interesting. I was aware of the books when they released but nev..."

Sundiver in particular stands pretty far from the later Uplift books. Startide Rising and The Uplift War have more points of commonality, and lead into the trilogy that begins with Brightness Reef, but they're also not direct sequels.

I also recently finished up The Pursuit of the Pankera: A Parallel Novel About Parallel Universes. It's the last book by Robert Heinlein. He apparently circulated it to friends and colleagues as a companion volume to The Number of the Beast. It's the same for the first quarter or so, then when the group goes to one parallel universe, this group goes to a different one. Well, with parallel universes, why not.

It's not great Heinlein, but it is definitely his style. I enjoyed it more than Variable Star, ALSO expected to be the last Heinlein ever, written by Spider Robinson from Heinlein's detailed treatment. Much as Spider and Heinlein got along, Spider didn't capture Heinlein's essence. That book left me fairly cold.

The book spends a lot of time in fictional universes that Heinlein liked. Rather too long for my taste. I was pleased to see that this time Heinlein didn't spend ages justifying screwing around on your mate like in Glory Road, although the opportunity more than presented itself in the book. There was altogether too much discussion of nudity, especially with father and daughter in the same room. Yuck.

This book was more like a love letter to Heinlein's favorite works than Number of the Beast, and read as self indulgent to me. It was still worth reading. All the other universes were properly licensed for this work, and the creators' estates are probably happy for the attention.

In the end it was simply okay, but because it constituted new Heinlein, I was glad to read it. An unexpected boon.

I just finished Annihilation by Jeff VanderMeer. This is one of those cases where the film adaptation far outshines the original. I thought the book was incredibly boring while the movie was excellent, very moody and creepy. Haunting. The book didn’t evoke any such feelings, just boredom.

Reading the audiobook of The City We Became by N.K. Jemisin. It’s pretty good, although I have two issues with it. One is that I don’t know New York very well (I’ve only visited once, and that was so long ago that the twin towers were still standing) so a lot of the resonance of the story isn’t really landing for me.
The second is that the real-world setting means that all the stuff about the woman-in-white and so on all feels a bit too on-the-nose. There are a number of occasions when the characters make very direct statements about racism, gentrification etc in a way that feels like a slightly too direct commentary on reality, almost like Jemisin wanted to write some non-fiction essays and then turned them into a novel at the last minute. I’d have happily read a book of non-fiction essays about racism and gentrification and the history and culture of New York, so in a way I’d have preferred it if she’d just gone ahead and done that.

I’d be interested to hear from anyone else who’s reading this book.

I started listening to Relic by Douglas Preston and Lincoln Child and I’m really into it. This is exactly the kind of horror I love. A labyrinthine natural history museum with huge abandoned sections and some kind of evil beast? Sign me up. For some reason this has really given me the urge to go to some museums. I’ll have to do that in like a year or so.

Brad wrote: "I started listening to Relic by Douglas Preston and Lincoln Child and I’m really into it. This is exactly the kind of horror I love. A labyrinthine natural history museum with huge abandoned sectio..."

I read that when it came out and my girlfriend was like, “What is so funny?�� So I read it aloud as we lounged by the pool, both of us laughing hysterically. The definition of “horror�� might vary a bit by reader. The Scooby Doo hijinks didn’t really bestow the scariness they intended.

Brad wrote: "I started listening to Relic by Douglas Preston and Lincoln Child and I’m really into it. This is exactly the kind of horror I love. A labyrinthine natural history museum with huge abandoned sectio..."

I think I like the sequel, Reliquary, even more, just because of the setting (the extensive network of tunnels -- subways, sewers, etc. -- underlying New York). The remaining many, many books in the series have had their ups and downs, but I've never found them less than entertaining.

Brad wrote: "I started listening to Relic by Douglas Preston and Lincoln Child and I’m really into it. This is exactly the kind of horror I love. A labyrinthine natural history museum with huge abandoned sectio..."

I read The Relic and Reliquary after watching the movie based on The Relic. The creature was the best actor in the film.

@Trike Well there’s brutal killings in a really creepy setting, I would call that horror. Anyways the book is definitely pulpy but it’s far from “so bad it’s funny��. It’s just pulpy, fun horror.

I just finished Network Effect. I flew through it.

Next up, the Nebula winner: A Song for a New Day. Cautiously optimistic.

Brad wrote: "@Trike Well there’s brutal killings in a really creepy setting, I would call that horror. Anyways the book is definitely pulpy but it’s far from “so bad it’s funny��. It’s just pulpy, fun horror."

You’ll get to it. The scene I’m thinking of is so melodramatic and over the top it’s like the Scoobies meet Bulwer-Lytton, enhanced by the 1940s dialogue.

I'm reading Girl, Serpent, Thorn by Melissa Bashardoust which is YA fairytale fantasy described in the blurb as Sleeping Beauty in Persia which I guess it kind of is but it's good! (Totally not my usual thing but good!)

10% into Black Leopard, Red Wolf. So far so good, almost dream like. Random things caught my interest like, what a monkey bread tree, adansonia digitata, looks like. Interesting world and a fast read so far, we'll see.

Just finished The Collapsing Empire by John Scalzi. My thoughts:

Scalzi is always fun to read, although I think I enjoy his work with a more contemporary-ish setting (like Lock In) or strongly pop-culture satire elements (Redshirts) more than his space opera. Or maybe I just find that his prose comes to life more when it’s read by Wil Wheaton - this is the first book of his that I’ve read through my eyeballs. Either way, I found this a fast-reading romp through a galaxy-spanning space empire, with a clever plot. However, the characters weren’t hugely compelling- although there were lots of different POVs, they never really felt that well differentiated from each other.

Finished The Lemurian Stone and started Adventures in Science Fantasy, a collection of Robert E. Howard's, well, science fantasy stories, most notably including his short, Barsoom-influenced novel Almuric.

I finished A Memory Called Empire on the 30th of June but haven't yet had the bandwidth to write up my thoughts (or even mark it complete unless my Kindle/Audible did that automagically despite me trying to have it NOT do that).

I'm still working through The Burning White. I'm into the last bit now and I still have no idea who will survive the story.

One of my favorite non-SFF series had its next book come out, so I'll jump into that, Muzzled. And the next Lady Astronaut book is on Audible soon, too...

terpkristin wrote: "I finished A Memory Called Empire on the 30th of June but haven't yet had the bandwidth to write up my thoughts (or even mark it complete unless my Kindle/Audible did that automagic..."

I, too, have been lacking the bandwidth to write up reviews. Even short ones. My workload is seriously kicking my butt - who knew I'd be working more at home than when I actually went to work? I hope it gets better for you! (And that auto Kindle update thing is super annoying. I've tried to disable it, but it still marks things as started and completed.)

It took me a little bit to get through A Memory Called Empire, despite really enjoying it. I just started Sharks in the Time of Saviors, which I wanted to read last month, but didn't have time. So far, so good, but it is taking me a much longer time to read, due to my unfamiliarity with the Hawaiian language/slang, and having to look up a word a page. It's been incredibly educational in that regard, though.

I had a whole bunch of holds come in on Overdrive, so I've got The Empire of Gold (so excited!) and Mexican Gothic on my plate, in addition to the monthly pick.

Started Jack the Giant Killer, old school urban fantasy, an early book by Charles de Lint.

I started and quickly lemmed Jo Walton's Or What You Will, which released this week. I'm far too tired to be patient with the meta-ness of it. (The main character directly points this out to the reader and says if you're not into it, best get out now before you write a one star ŷ������ review. I laughed and agreed.)

Finished The City We Became, you can read my review here: /review/show...
By a happy coincidence, I finished it on the same date that the story of the book ends on - 9th July.
I’d be very interested to hear what others thought.

I am also in the no-energy-to-write-a-review club.

One third thru the current BOTM, still enjoying it and the rich culture permeating every inch of it. I also started Catfishing on CatNet which to me looks like the most interesting Lodestar nominee aside from Dragon Pearl. Also halfway and quite enjoying it.

Silvana wrote: "I am also in the no-energy-to-write-a-review club."

You guys are catching my review lethargy.

I've always been terrible at reviews. I tried for a while, but... Here are the last three books I finished:

Magician: Apprentice - "A decent tale. (Well, half a tale.)"

Magician: Master - "This ends the story arc from Magician: Apprentice. The ending is satisfying in that most loose ends are wrapped up. Overall, a relatively light/cozy fantasy book without much in the way of major plot twists."

The Name of All Things: "Second book in the series transitions to events with a different cast of key characters in a similar story telling fashion to the first book. Don't worry Khirin is still in the mix."

I usually use audible for the book club picks but since I'm skipping this month's book pick, I'm listening to Children of Virtue and Vengeance instead.

I finally finished That We May Live from Two Lines Press, which is a collection of very recent speculative fiction from China. The small press asked the translators they work with to help them find stuff that is popular elsewhere but hadn't been translated.

I wrote a pretty long review with little tidbits on each story, but there are some fun themes like feminism, capitalism, and beasts.

A hold over from June, I am 80% into 4 3 2 1 by Paul Auster, my favorite living author. The structure of it is pretty unusual, in that it tells the life story of one Archie Ferguson, but in 4 different simultaneous paths. And having read Auster's previous two autobiographical books (Winter Journal, Report from the Interior), you can really see where he took from his own life history/experiences. - Reading Auster always inspires me to attempt to write something.

Done with Catfishing on CatNet. Both fun and scary (internet surveillance and data theft, eek!)

Starting Minor Mage.

Silvana - did you read the short that Catfishing came from? Charming.

Rick wrote: "Silvana - did you read the short that Catfishing came from? Charming. "

You're the second person who told me about this story (which I never read and did not know exist) in the span of 30 minutes, so yeah, it's now in my to-read list :D

Rick wrote: "Silvana - did you read the short that Catfishing came from? Charming. "

A very cute little story, thanks for sharing! I’m trying to read more short fiction so I’m always on the lookout for story recs.

Currently reading The Fourth Turning: What the Cycles of History Tell Us about America's Next Rendezvous with Destiny which is nonfiction written in 1997 and oh my god, they were right about everything.

“History is seasonal, and winter is coming.��

Making my way through the Murderbot series.

Finished 1 & 2 and now reading Rogue Protocol

This is a fun series.