They did a similar bundle for Mercedes Lackey Valdemar books awhile ago and I got everything downloaded correctly! You will need a Kobo account to redeem the key HumbleBundle gives you (very similar to their Steam keys for game bundles), and then can use Kobo’s app on non-Kobo devices or Calibre/etc to read.
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My issue is I prefer reading ebooks on my 11 year old Kindle Touch… which definitely doesn’t have apps. Trying to read on my phone ends up being a terrible idea.
I’ll continue noodling…
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I just read The Door-to-Door Bookstore by Carsten Henn. I thought it was very sweet.
Through my No Buy research I have been watching a lot of Hannah Louise Poston youtube vids and she recommends the Elizabeth George mystery series and I am so excited to get my hands on book one. I miss the feeling of tearing through books and I have always gravitated towards mystery as my genre of choice. I was disappoined with the Louise Penny series after book 2 was soooo fat shamey after book 1 was so lovely. So here’s hoping this is the one that sticks!
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I just read Iris Kelly Doesn’t Date by Ashley Herring Blake. It’s the final book in a series, and just as cute as the first two.
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I just finished Marlowe Banks, Redesigned by Jacqueline Firkins. I really enjoyed it.
I read the first book of the Will Darling adventures by KJ Charles. I won’t read the rest but if you like the Lady Violet Mystery series but want it jazz age and with a m+m romance (in the first book anyway) then this will be up your ally.
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Sixteen Ways to Defend a Walled City by KJ Parker (who is also Tom Holt). A dark humour book in a secondary world about the last ditch stand of a city led by the head of the military engineering corps. It is very dark (many deaths) and the POV character is knowingly annoying, and the ending is a bit hurt by learning that there are two sequels. I have asked the library for the second book.
I missed my 50 book target in 2023 due to not reading to completion any new books since mid October, so two new books so far this year is a good sign I think.
ETA: shouldn’t have been so positive, bailed out of Doctorow’s Attack Surface at page 400 of 600ish. Perhaps the ‘against all odds as narrated by a snarky morally compromised geek’ was too similar to the Parker book.
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Nettle & Bone by T Kingfisher
It won a Hugo. Obviously it shouldn’t have won the Hugo, there is a big asterisk for everything last year, but I think it’s obvious that Babel would have won except for that excuse for a human and a few people deciding to exhibit sheep like behaviour. But even of the list we did have, I think Daughter of Dr Moreau should have gotten it.
There is a really good book in there, but I wish it was more fully explored, giving us more depth on the world, the relationship with the sister, the apothecary, or interior life of our tight third protag. As it is, a solidly fine almost YA feeling book. Maybe needed more horror?
Oh, and the KJ Parker book I mentioned in Jan was not cheating with its end, and the two sequels were also playing fair. Probably even more enjoyable for someone who often thinks about the Roman empire and the founding of Constantinople.
I thought I was reading N&B for the 2024 list, I forgot it won last year. So now I still need to read 3 of the 6 short list for the 2024 Hugo before the voting closes. Plus the various short stories, novellas, and the ‘not a hugos’
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I read Nettle and Bone shortly after reading The Wizard’s Guide to Defensive Baking which was a YA novel by the same author, Nettle and Bone benefitted by the comparison. Defensive Baking was fun (if dark) but the ending felt a little lacking. Nettle felt more developed and mature. I would love to see another book in the same world as Nettle and Bone though.
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I feel like Defensive Baking is more middle grade, where Nettle & Bone is on the line between YA and not. Perhaps part of it is the protagonist is 30, but she’s a very young 30 (I was also a young 30, but I think still older than that).
I don’t dislike Nettle & Bone. I actually liked it (and wished it were better). I just don’t think it should be a Hugo winner. But also, I disagree with many Hugo winners.
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I’m reading the Throne of Glass series currently. My Kindle says that I’ve read at LEAST the first 3 books. When I download them they said “Read”, and when I open them, they open to the end of the book, but I DON’T REMEMBER READING THEM.
Also Robopocalypse.
Like, the Throne of Glass books are vaguely familiar, but just in a “this is YA fantasy, I’m secretly the magic chosen one who has to choose between two great dudes who have some issues but both care about her” way, not in a “Hm, I think I’ve already read this” way.
I’m very confused, this usually doesn’t happen to me. I do read a lot of books, but I also remember them pretty well, even if I often get surprise details during re-reads that I missed the first time around.
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The Last Slave Ship: The True Story of How Clotilda Was Found, Her Descendants, and an Extraordinary Reckoning (by Ben Raine). I’m audiobooking it from the library. It’s very grim, but very good.
(I’d also reserved I’m Glad My Mom Died by Jennette McCurdy which wasn’t due to become available until the end of the month. It came in early so I’m powering my way through the above as fast as I can 
)
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I read an amazing book and everyone else should read it too. It’s called Eve by Cat Bohannon, it’s a look at evolutionary biology centered on female bodies. The chapters are:
- Milk (happened before boobs!)
- Womb (confirming once again that human periods are kinda bullshit, but explaining why we ended up with bullshit periods)
- Perception (eyes and ears, and how they differ between women and men and why those differences probably happened)
- Legs (and also the skeleton as a whole as our ancestors decided to walk upright even though our backs and spines were like “Wait wut, pls no”)
- Tools (I think this is the chapter where she talks about gynecology and the earliest historical records we have of gynecological tools, and how that information was probably disbursed to other hominids over time)
- Brain (why so big in us and not other monkey/ape types, difficulties in having big brains)
- Voice (why do men have deeper voices anyway? What’s up with that?)
- Menopause (did you know there’s only one other known species that has menopause? And that other species is a type of whale.)
- Love (why monogamy? Why not something else? Is it biological, cultural, something else? What about sexism? Also lots of talk about dicks and balls in different species. Heh. Balls.)
She’s got a great sense of humor. It’s also a very beefy book, it took me something like 12-13 hours to read according to Libby, I think I had to check it out 4+ times? Half the book is citations and notes about sources.
She also did an interview with NPR which touches on how modern medicine ignores human bodies. That’s something she gets into just in the books introduction. It took a long time to get through but it was really worth it, it’s easily the best book I’ve read in the last twelve months.
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I got a copy of this and really really need to get to it.
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Just try to do it one chapter at a time and treat it like a series. That’s basically what I ended up doing.
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I just borrowed and downloaded both Dark Matter and The Sunlit Man (Brandon Sanderson’s secret project #4)
I opened The Sunlit Man, and was SO CONFUSED about how everything was going to be tied into the cosmere. Then I got to the acknowledgements and it says “Dark Matter was such a hard book to write…” 
I guess this is what I get for reading on a Kindle exclusively and never getting to see the cover of the book I’m reading.
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Popping in! What are you all using to track books you’ve read these days? I tried using Goodreads recently and it was so clunky.
I just read “Happier Hour” and would say that I recommend it, but with the caveat that it’s one that you take what resonates with you. UCLA business school professor talks about intentional time management. Mostly helpful. She has maybe elementary school aged kids, so the book does talk about that season of life and most of her case studies are women.
Also let me know if you can read it and spot a single thing her husband does at home other than do a bad job getting her kids ready for school a few days a week. I assumed it was written awhile ago but just came out in 2022.
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Storygraph
Has advantage of not being amazon and fun graphs/goal tracking
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Bookmory
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