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Hi everyone!

Hope you all are hanging in there.

This week i finished:

Men Explain Things to Me - this was just ok for me. Kind of depressing to read, and because it was essays written for other things gathered together, there was a lot of repetition for a short book. Popsugar book with only text on the cover

The Queen of Nothing - third book of the series, i tore through this. Loved it! I like that Jude is a messy protagonist. Lots of failure, lots of mistakes, bad choices, but not in a "that's CLEARLY the wrong move, why did you do that?" way. Counted for popsugar flora or fauna in the author's name.

Rescue & Jessica: A Life-Changing Friendship- Read Harder children's picture book with human characters from a marginalized group. It was about a girl who was a recent amputee learning to do things with the help of her service dog. Cute, decent art.

The Faceless Old Woman Who Secretly Lives In Your Home - preordered this, which was unusual for me since i usulaly wait for $5 or less sales. but the live tour got postponed and they got hit hard with all the cancellations, so i wanted to support them. I liked it, interesting story that wasn't what I expected. Counted as my book published in 2020.

currently reading:

The Count of Monte Cristo - read another 30 pages or so. Very slow!

Magic for Liars - just started last night, enjoying so far. I like magic meets noir in general. This will be my book with a trans/binary author.

QOTW:

I'll borrow from Popsugar. What are some of your favorite literary quotes?

I admit I dont' generally quote literature much, i have a bad memory for exact phrasing. but I love the night circus and. love:

“You're in the right place at the right time, and you care enough to do what needs to be done. Sometimes that's enough.�
� Erin Morgenstern, The Night Circus

and

“Good and evil are a great deal more complex than a princess and a dragon . . . is not the dragon the hero of his own story?�
� Erin Morgenstern, The Night Circus

I also really like
“Of course it is happening inside your head, Harry, but why on earth should that mean that it is not real?�

� J.K. Rowling, Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows

We're on our fourth? full week of working from home here. I'm settling into the routine, and it is nice not having to get up earlier for my commute. But there's things I miss doing, too. I never thought I'd say I miss going to the gym, but I really do.

I hope you enjoy Magic for Liars, Sheri! I read it recently and liked it a lot.

This week I finished Silver in the Wood which I enjoyed a lot. It was very fairy-tale like and rooted in folklore. This is my Popsugar book with "gold," "silver," or "bronze" in the title.

I'm currently reading Children of Virtue and Vengeance, which is book 2 in the series. This will my planned Popsugar book by a woman of color. I loved the first one, so hoping this is just as good.

QOTW:

Aside from the humorous quotes my partner and I always trade back and forth, most of which come from The Dresden Files. ("Tiny but fierce" and "Polka will never die" are both said frequently in our house)...

I think these two quotes from Bujold are the ones I am always going back to. I should have a look through my GR book highlights and quotes for some more.

“Reputation is what other people know about you. Honor is what you know about yourself.� - Lois McMaster Bujold, A Civil Campaign

"Any man can be kind when he is comfortable.� - Lois McMaster Bujold, The Curse of Chalion

And there's also one I've always liked from one of Pat Rothfuss's books (I think book 2): “Anyone can love a thing because. That's as easy as putting a penny in your pocket. But to love something despite. To know the flaws and love them too. That is rare and pure and perfect.�

At last check-in, I was slogging through The Story of Edgar Sawtelle for IRL Book Club #1. It was painful on so many levels, and probably my least-favorite book we've read in that group, and in my bottom few of all time - aside from being about a subject (dog breeding) that doesn't interest me (which is not the author's fault), the "story" is both glacially paced and incoherent, the characters are barely formed, so no one's motivations are ever clear. The setting is somehow both overly specific and unclear, too. So, basically any way that a book can be unengaging, this one manages to hit.

After that, I decided I deserved something fun, so I went ahead and read Space Opera, which was everything I needed - funny, smart, current - and short. :) The backstory was a bit jumbled, but it was so much fun that I couldn't be too upset about that. And I see that there is a sequel planned for next year, which I suspect will go into more detail on some of the band's years together. I could probably do a whole post of amazing quotes just from this book, but I'll hold off for now.

After that, I pulled one off of my TBR - The Long Earth, that I didn't remember anything about (including why it was on my TBR). It ended up being one of the best things I've read in quite a while - it was everything I wanted Jasper Fforde's last few books to be, and a totally different type of writing than the other Terry Pratchett book I read recently. I can't wait to read the rest of the series, since it could literally go in any direction.

I'm currently reading No One Is Coming to Save Us, another one that ended up on my TBR for unremembered reasons. I'm about halfway through, and it's a bit more relationship/domestic drama than I usually enjoy, but it's very well-written and reminds me of some of those mid-20th century plays about all of the interconnected relationships in families and small towns (even though I'm pretty sure it's set in the present day).

QOTW: I tend to refer more frequently to concepts, rather than specific quotes, from books in my daily life - but there are a few from the Rivers of London series that tend to come up frequently (especially at work):

"The Folly had last been refurbished in the 1930s when the British establishment firmly believed that central heating was the work, if not of the devil per se, then definitely evil foreigners bent on weakening the hardy British spirit."

"The police never saw a noun they didn't want to turn into a verb, so it quickly became 'to action,' as in you action me to undertake a Falcon assessment, I action a Falcon assessment, a Falcon assessment has been actioned and we all action in a yellow submarine, a yellow submarine, a yellow submarine."

"The kitchen was the kind of brushed steel monstrosity that looks more like it's designed to weaponize viruses than cook dinner"

"'Who made the 999 call?' 'Dunno,' said Purdy. 'Mobile, probably.' It's officers like Purdy that give the Metropolitan Police its sterling reputation for customer service that makes us the envy of the civilized world."

"Like a lot of London, Richmond town center had been laid out back when town planning was something that happened to other people"

"...one of those formless red brick shopping centers which artfully combines a complete lack of aesthetic quality with a total disregard for the utilitarian function for which it was built."

Megan, your quotes jogged my brain and I had to go look up this quote from Brust, which is in the same vein with some of the ones you included:

“There was a sergeant at a desk. I knew he was a sergeant because I recognized the marks on his uniform, and I knew it was a desk because it's always a desk. There's always someone at a desk, except when it's a table that functions as a desk. You sit behind a desk, and everyone knows you're supposed to be there, and that you're doing something that involves your brain. It's an odd, special kind of importance. I think everyone should get a desk; you can sit behind it when you feel like you don't matter.�
- Steven Brust, Iorich

I am still working from home, but the amount of work available has been steadily decreasing.

I like to read classicmystery.blog, a reviewer who tries to find the sort of fair clued mystery that I like. However, he reviews a lot of old books that are difficult to find. I assumed that would be the case with Death, My Darling Daughters when he mentioned it was "worth a reprint", but someone commented that it was available in the US on Hoopla, so I jumped on it. It was fun, with an engaging tone and a cast of fairly despicable characters who were funny enough to avoid being obnoxious. Although it was very much in the vein of the British country house murder, it was somehow strikingly American. Multiple commenters mentioned that this one had less of the protagonist's rather annoying daughter than other entries in the series, so I might not seek out further examples.

I next read Semicolon: The Past, Present, and Future of a Misunderstood Mark. Semicolons were one of the affectations of my youth; I mostly outgrew them after college. I liked this book, although I would have liked to see more of a historical review of semicolon usage and a little less lit crit/anti-prescriptionist screed.

I'm on to Milk and Honey, which I remember being praised when it came out but never got around to reading. It's good so far, but I didn't realize it was so much about sexual assault and unhealthy relationships, so I'm not really relating to it personally.

QOTW: I don't know if I have a favorite quote, but I'll give one that has been meaningful to me in different ways, from Wuthering Heights.

"Whatever our souls are made of, his and mine are the same; and Linton's is as different as a moonbeam from lightning, or frost from fire."

When we read the book in high school, I thought the first part of that was so profound, and that people about whom I felt that way were destined to be the most special to me. I eventually learned to see how Catherine's shallowness in that whole scene still applies to this quote, and also to realize that when I have that feeling about people, it generally goes about as well as Catherine and Heathcliff. I don't know about frost and fire, but I try to allow people to have their own souls - including myself.

I emerged from my re-read of the entire A Wrinkle in Time series feeling like I was ready to tackle some new books again, but still wanting nothing too serious, so I read Every Heart a Doorway by Seanan McGuire and now I have to try and get the rest of the series from the library on ebook because I adored it. I just love her writing.

I went next for a memoir that has been sitting on my kindle for a while, Feast: True Love in and out of the Kitchen by Hannah Howard. I got it as a free kindle first deal several years ago, and as the quality of those free books is sometimes dubious, I was pleasantly surprised how well written this one was. The author is a food writer and details how she bounced around from job to job in the culinary scene all while struggling with an eating disorder.

I'm back to brain candy urban fantasy now, with Clean Sweep by Ilona Andrews. It's not quiiiiite living up to the standard she set in her Kate Daniels books, which I LOVED, but it's still enjoyable and just what I was in the mood for.

QOTW: Gotta go classic Tolkien-
“All that is gold does not glitter,
Not all those who wander are lost;
The old that is strong does not wither,
Deep roots are not reached by the frost.

From the ashes a fire shall be woken,
A light from the shadows shall spring;
Renewed shall be blade that was broken,
The crownless again shall be king.�

Also the opening line of The Voyage of the Dawn Treader: "There was a boy named Eustace Clarence Scrubb, and he almost deserved it."

I haven't checked in for a while. I hope everyone is staying well and healthy.

I am still reading The Starless Sea. I have about 100 pages left. It was due at the library long ago officially, but the library is closed indefinitely so they want everyone to keep the materials at home. So I can read it, others can read it too! I read at night before bedtime, in my bed. I find that I read it for a while, like 20-30 minutes and I relax and settle into the story and then all sudden I'm definitely falling asleep. This happens a few times and I give in and turn off the light. When I do that I start "thinking" about things, the state of the world and cannot fall asleep even though I was just so easily doing so.

I am also listening still to Leviathan Wakes as I walk. We now have 5 adults living here so I don't walk alone all that often anymore. It is also a very long book, probably 18 hours. I am about 1/3 of the way through it.

QOTW: Maybe it's my stressed and tired brain, but I am drawing a total blank on quotes. I don't often retain things like that anyway but right now, I'm definitely not coming up with anything.

So far so good from my house. I shudder to think what my reading page count is for the last few weeks, through.

Finished both Iron Gold and Dark Age, which brings be completely up to date on the series as has been written so far. It's written as two trilogies, set 10 years apart. These two books are the first 2/3 of the second trilogy, and introduce several new first person POV characters and their subplots, set against the main plotline- meaning they are quite different than the first three in the series. It look me quite awhile to warm up to being in someone else's head besides the main character, but once I did, I really enjoyed these two books, just on a little bit different level than the first three.

Was debating what to read following these. I technically had The Good Neighbor: The Life and Work of Fred Rogers next in my queue. But given how much of a bloodbath Red Rising ended up being, I decided that the mental whiplash that would result wasn't appealing. So I grabbed The Way of Kings instead. Book 4 in the series is due out later this year, so it's due for a reread. Plus it is 100% comfort reading for me, being one of my absolute favorite series. Also, I happen to have time to deal with a set of three 1000+ page books at the moment... so off we go. Swooon!!!!!!

QOTW
Per The Way of Kings: "Life before death, strength before weakness, journey before destination" has been especially meaningful lately.

There are more from Lord of the Rings than I can list.