Just started reading “Shaun’s Great Expectations” by Kathleen Loughnan will review it after I’ve done.
Slowly reading Jo Walton’s “Or What you Will”, which has gone back to the library, but I’m putting back on hold.
This one is weird, even by the measure of a recent Jo Walton book. The narrator is a self-aware voice in an author’s head who has been the protagonist in several of her books (imbued the protagonists? they have been different characters and are not consistently a specific gender or species)
The story alternates between the narrator talking directly to you the reader about themselves, the narrator telling you about their relationship with the author and reporting their conversations, and a book the author is writing that is set in the same world as their first published trilogy but several centuries later. And the narrator is both talking with the author about the book that is being written and imbuing one of the characters within it.
But it’s Jo Walton, so it’s working for me so far.
5 Likes
Finished Come Tumbling Down,, the latest Wayward Children book from Seanan Mcguire. I like that they’re fun reads with a variety of worlds, but I wish there was more actual worldbuilding that went into them. The worlds themselves are fun, but each one has its own single note and that’s all we see. Still, it was
Possible Spoilers
about as solid/happy a conclusion to Jack’s and Jill’s stories following Down Among the Sticks and Bones and Every Heart a Doorway as we were likely to get.
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Finished Gunpowder and Embers by John Ringo. And friends. Not sure if it’s just specific authors I liked in the past or if it’s becoming more common across the board, but I’ve been seeing a lot more collaborations than individual writing lately and the books don’t seem to be getting better for it. This one read an awful lot like There Will Be Dragons starting from a slightly lower tech base and a much less interesting backstory. It didn’t have to be, but so much got glossed over for the sake of introducing yet another character that it just became a string of scenes without much connection. Seriously, you’ve got time-hopping bugs with a cult of human followers, for extremely unclear reasons fire breathing Pteranodons…forget the plucky farm boy with the quest and do something with them.
Also, if every ex-US soldier a character runs into, regardless of branch, the fact that the US ceased to exist 30 years before, and the fact that the book covers a good chunk of the country east of the Mississippi, recognizes every other ex-US soldier the moment they see each other (or even by just a passing reference to a name, as in ‘Sure, I know Dave’ when ‘Dave’ is quite literally the only identifying information that’s been given), that might be stretching suspension of disbelief a little far.
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Finished “Shauna’s Great Expectations” by Kathleen Loughnan
Spoilers kinda?
Summary
I didn’t mind the book, but the authors anti abortion stance came through really awkwardly and it took away from the story for me
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Ooh, my current book is very good! How To Be A Good Creature by Sy Montgomery. It’s the memoir of an animal writer, told in her friendships with 13 animals. She’s observant and wry. Annie Dillard meets Gerard Durrell? I’m excited because she’s a pretty prolific author and now I get to enjoy her other books too.
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I may be trying to read too many books. I have a phone book, an audiobook, and three regular books. Four if you count the one I am reading to LB. Well, I will finish them eventually.
I feel like this could be the year I really finish the BookRiot Read Harder challenge. Has anyone done this before? I usually get partway into it and then get distracted with things I have to read for work.
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Just finished Watership Down (it’s been a couple decades).
I keep trying to read Lab Girl but I need to set aside some time during the afternoon for that, it isn’t really bedtime reading for me.
Started the Empire of Grass from Tad Williams. He’s usually decent for light fantasy reading.
Finished the book on water chemistry for brewing beer again. Learned a few more things, but didn’t ever get around to setting up my lab again. The basement just doesn’t seem like good lab space to me.
I keep giving my old tangential calc book the side eye, but I haven’t opened it up yet.
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Watership Down. I love that book with the passion of a thousand fiery suns.
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I had nightmares for a month from my 3rd grade teacher reading Watership Down to us.
I was a very imaginative and easily frightened child. I should revisit that book at some point 
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People think it’s a kid’s book because it’s about rabbits. It’s not a kid’s book, imo, or at least not a younger kid’s book.
ETA: I describe it as a book about “war, home, friendship, family, sex, blood, and rabbits.”
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I didn’t have nightmares, but I didn’t enjoy the book. Maybe I should give it another shot.
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I have a very good guess as to the name and it is an excellent name. And an excellent rabbit to be named after.
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I’ve never read it. Seems like it would be recommended though?
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Watership Down is definitely excellent. I stole it from my parents long ago and still have their copy 
Just finished Boundary (first in the Boundary series from Eric Flint/Ryk Spoor)…still a fun read, near-future type stuff although some of the political stuff is a little weird to read even though it’s not that old. And the library says the second book is ready for pickup so I’ll get it with the batch this weekend.
Imaginary Numbers was last night’s read (latest InCryptid book from Seanan Mcguire)…it took me a little longer to get into than most of the InCryptid books, but I really liked the new twist. It ended pretty abruptly with the most-definitely-necessary next book not out until next month, but so it goes.
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finished Seanan McGuire’s Dying with Her Cheer Pants On, which is a collection of her Fighting Pumpkin cheerleaders save the world short stories.
Exceptionally lighthearted, but not really worth paying the Subterranean Press + shipping prices. But the Shadowy one did that several times last year without discussion (not quite sure what was going on, but not worth bringing up now. the agreement is check for anything over 100, it is just odd that so many were bought without any mention at all)
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Just finished Rebecca West’s The Fountain Overflows, which is an exceptionally good book in which not much happens - mostly it’s about the importance music holds to musicians, and the strategies children take to cope in an adult world. The structure reminds me of The Rainbow, which I read in college and didn’t much like, and Little Women, which I loved as a kid but find unbearably preachy now.
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Ohhh, I loved Watership Down. It’s been years. I should read it again.
I recently finished the book club book, Of Fire and Stars! Very good f/f YA fantasy.
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Finished Threshold (Ryk Spoor and Eric Flint) and A Longer Fall (Charlaine Harris) since they were both pretty quick reads
Threshold was good, a lot more political machinations than the previous but a fair amount of sciencey stuff thrown in too, and there was enough about it that I didn’t remember that I’m looking forward to Portal whenever it shows up (coming from a library outside our immediate system and I’m not sure how they’re handling that right now). Was also nice that while the authors included a couple of the standard US-politician-adversary types, they also managed to include a main villain who’s neither Chinese nor Russian (or Soviet if it’s an older book). I know they’re the standard go-tos for near future science fiction, but seriously, there are a hell of a lot of other countries out there.
A Longer Fall was better than the previous book in the series, I think (An Easy Death), but the author is so damned determined to show that the characters are living in The Worst World Ever that I’m sometimes sitting there saying ‘okay, got it, time for some plot now.’
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I finished Dark Tides by Philippa Gregory. It was good, but I preferred the first one which seems fairly normal for me with series.
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