RIP (Read In Progress) Wednesday

[quillpunk]

The clock has turned once more. It is Wednesday.

What are you reading? 👀

Comments

[quillpunk]

Basically didn't read anything the last week or so of May (got a cold that just wiped me out, sigh) so glad to be able to report something again!

Currently on The Amazing Alpha Tau Pledge Project by Lisa Henry & Sarah Honey, Sphere by Michael Crichton and still on The Foxhole Court by Nora Sakavic. I'll finish it one day. Also just finished The Disabled Tyrant's Beloved Pet Fish Vol. 1 which I liked but it sure ended on a bit of a cliffhanger, LOL.

[sixbeforelunch]

I'm a bit more than half-way through City of Bones by Martha Wells and really liking it. Wells is so good at crafting believable, likable characters.

I also started Mexican Gothic by Silvia Moreno-Garcia and am having a good time with that too. I'm 70 pages in and really love the protagonist. Debutantes don't usually get to be heroines, at least not in non-romance novels. Moreno-Garcia is doing a great job at setting the atmosphere, going full-throttle with the gothic tropes without tipping over into parody.

[muccamukk]

City of Bones was my first Martha Wells book. I should reread it now that it's out again.

[senmut]

Currently on one of the Elfquest anthologies. Might do Moonstorm by Yoon Ha Lee next, or a reread of an old 80s book. Not sure yet.

[finch]

Moonstorm is definitely on my want-to-read list!

[senmut]

I have it! I just need... brains. LOL.

[white_aster]

Elfquest! :D I remember having so much fun with that.

[geraineon]

I finished a Chinese short story, One Flew Over the Donghua River, recommended here: https://cnovels.dreamwidth.org/8329.html

Started The Bad Kids by Chen Zijin. Also in translation. I really enjoyed that drama, so I'm looking forward to find out the differences between the novel and the drama.

Information about The Bad Kids here: https://www.penguinrandomhouse.com/books/724652/bad-kids-by-zijin-chen/

[suncani]

Still reading Labyrinth's Heart, Scorpions in Corinth and A Veiled & Hallowed Eve. All are good, I just seem to be going in fits and starts with each of their stories.

I read Stolen Focus by Johann Hari which I'm in two minds about. I do like that he frames technology and the pace of society's effect on concentration as a societal issue and likens demands for regulation to the fight for the working week. But the chapter on ADHD rubs me up the wrong way.

I've also started Death in the Spires by KJ Charles. It's keeping my attention so far but I think that's more Charles' skill as a writer as I'm not always a fan of flashbacks and historical academia. It is great however to have a KJ Charles book where the mystery is the whole of the plot not equal billing with the romance (which is not to say I don't like her romances, I adore them).

[wearing_tearing]

Aaahh Soulbound! How are you liking the series? :D

[suncani]

I really enjoyed it as a series! It reminded me why I enjoyed urban fantasy in the first place and I think it balanced incorporating different deities without it becoming too much of a hodge-podge. I do think it was probably the right length though, however much I enjoy spending time with them all.

[wearing_tearing]

I agree with the balance! It was very impressive that Turner managed to juggle all characters without getting lost in them. I also liked the length, though I am very happy there are still in-universe books coming out :D

[ebaths]

My girlfriend recently read Stolen Focus and did a long write-up on it on her Dreamwidth if you’re interested in checking it out. I read some of it via listening to the audiobook as well. I think we both had a mixed reaction to it.

I agree with you on the focus for societal and regulation change. I liked his writing and the types of things he covered but I mostly struggled with “believing” in what Hari was saying…like I kept second-guessing him in my head (“Is that really true?”). I can be kind of combative when reading books like this from non-experts, so that’s partially my own thing but XD

[suncani]

I really enjoyed your gf's breakdown of it, and once my brain is forming words more coherently I'll go comment in greater depth there.

I think it helped that a fair bit of what he was saying were things I had come across in other places so was more inclined to go along with it. But yes, I think if what he was saying was brand new it would easy to try and poke holes in it.

[svgurl]

May wasn't a great reading month, but I'm slowly getting through "The Unraveling of Cassidy Holmes" by Elissa R. Sloan.

[muccamukk]

Five or six chapters in to Mirrored Heavens by Rebecca Roanhorse, and trying to remember who the 300 different characters are and what happened to them last book.

[vriddy]

A bit stuck in Winter's Orbit. I'm hoping the characters move past the misunderstandings soon and get onto the working together/learning more about each other by solving problems part, but I wonder if maybe the point isn't the slowburn based on characters never clarifying their thoughts and reactions to each other, in which case this may not be the right time for me to read this...

[white_aster]

Yeah...it does take quite a bit before all the misunderstanding stuff gets ironed out. If it's bugging you and you're early on? It IS a major thing that keeps going through most of the book, IIRC.

[vriddy]

I was hoping someone who'd read it would pop in and confirm what lies ahead!! Thank you. I was excited about the upcoming conspiracy stuff from the backcover, and I sure am wondering what is up with some characters like the sister, but it might not be the right kind of story for me right now if this is all background to the misunderstanding bits.

[white_aster]

The conspiracy stuff does kind of dilute out the constant sense that the MCs are talking past each other (as they have something to concentrate on together) for the middle 50%ish of the book. But...I imagine you've got the sense at this point that Something Happened which Jainan is reacting to but which he will not talk about because he's playing rules only he knows about, and I think a perceptive reader can pick up very easily the vague outline of what that thing is. The SPECIFICS, though, end up being part of the main mystery, so unfortunately Jainan can't actually confide in Kiem too early for meta reasons, or the mystery unravels too quickly. Thus, there's a lot of the two of them playing hot and cold as Kiem is honestly trying really hard to be supportive and a good guy and Jainan is constantly misinterpreting him. I felt like that went on too long, personally, and it was definitely there for most of the book. :shruggies?:

[petrea_mitchell]

I decided I wanted to read The Road to Freedom, and so I felt compelled to read The Road to Serfdom first to understand exactly what it was responding to.

All I knew before starting was that Hayek was a neoliberal icon, and the book has been... somewhat different from what I expected based on that. Like, last night I got to a bit where Hayek endorses both universal healthcare and a right to housing.

[wearing_tearing]

Started 2 books this week:

My Darling Dreadful Thing by Johanna van Veen - loving everything about it! I'm always a fan of horror books that deal with spirit companions/possession and crumbling homes. I'm pretty curious about what's going to happen since the first few chapters have giving me almost negative clues about where the plot is going lol

Ruthless Vows by Rebecca Ross - eeeehhh. eeeeeeeehhhhhhh. I'm interested in this expanding the world-building a little more, but I'm never a fan of memory loss as a plot device. We'll see how things goes and if I hate it.

[muccamukk]

I on the other hand LOVE memory loss as a plot device (kicks five more amnesia fic under the rug), so looking forward to that :D

[wearing_tearing]

skdfjksfsf have fun then! I think you'll very much enjoy it :D

[finch]

Resisting the temptation to reread Fourth Wing for fanfic purposes. Reading You Should Be So Lucky instead, historical queer sports romance. Very appropriate for June, I guess.

This week

[dialecticdreamer]

The Gulag Archipelago...

It's hard. I mean, I read two pages and then drag myself to the equivalent of fluffy kitten videos for at least twice as long as I spent reading. The book is so worth it, but... Watch the news, read the book synopsis, and anyone with enough brain volume to whistle can see why it's difficult to read.

[azurelunatic]

I have started a re-read of Mercedes Lackey's Arrows trilogy, and Courtney Milan's Worth series.

My bedtime audiobooks are in Donna Andrews' Meg Langslow bird pun themed cozy mystery series; right now I'm on We'll Always Have Parrots (old book but newly acquired in audio by my library). I wrap around when I finish, at a rate of one book every week or two. Since the series is at 30+ books and tends to add two a year, I'm not in any danger of running out. (I use cozy books that I've already read without anything too exciting. The series is slightly formulaic, which means I can anticipate where in the book Meg will encounter Peril by percentage elapsed, and save the excitement for morning.)

We haven't started it yet, but the audiobook for my in-car book club with my partner is Bujold's The Curse of Chalion, which will be a re-read for me and new for them. I'm picking books I love that I think they will like but they might not pick up for themselves; we recently finished the third of the Locked Tomb series and are impatiently awaiting Alecto the Ninth.

[ebaths]

I love Mercedes Lackey! I read the first of the Arrows trilogy but never got around to the other two…I’d like to sometime, I enjoyed the first one. I got into her via the Oathbound/Vows and Honor series.

[azurelunatic]

I saw By the Sword in my library's ebooks, and then I had to re-read the rest of Tarma & Kethry's adventures, and after that Talia... I have a hold on Vanyel's trilogy as well.

[white_aster]

Reading:

--The Underworld: Journeys to the Depths of the Ocean by Susan Casey. Nonfiction about the wild and wacky deep ocean and the crazy people who go down to study it.

--Fool's Run by Patricia A. McKillip. Rare sci-fi from McKillip, and it's...dense. And a bit hard to figure out what's actually going on or what things look like. Reminds me of Jo Walton books I read when I was young.


Finished:

--The Warden by Daniel M. Ford. Fantasy, necromancer wizard cop/judge gets sent to middle of nowhere, finds herself trouble to get into. There were parts of this I really liked and parts I thought were half-baked and didn't make sense (both in a worldbuilding and a "why would you DO it that way?" sort of way). I feel like there's a really good novella in here that I would have given 5 stars to, sandwiched inbetween some kind of 2-star parts. (And let's just say I question her choice in love interests. The pretty half-elf adventurer you know nothing about? Or the handsome, well-spoken, and incredibly competent half-orc druid who you bantered comfortably with while you two went on a death-defying roadtrip where you saved each other's lives once or twice? Let's just say, I know who I'd have been courting, if this was a dating sim, and it was not the one she picked!)

Next: Another book from the TBR physical book pile of doom!

[ebaths]

I’m reading The Actual True Story of Ahmed and Zarga by Mohamedou Ould Slahi. He is a Mauritanian man who was detained in Guantánamo Bay for 14 years, and the writer of the Guantánamo Diaries book.

The novel is the story of Ahmed, a Mauritanian camel farmer who goes after one of his camels (Zarga) when she gets separated from the group. So far, I like it—it’s a very unusual setting for me. It’s a bit of a slow read.