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Seriously - D. Quixote is giving out publishing advice to an indie author, in Barcelona circa 1610s.. (This is a very meta book about books and fans and publishing...)

I can almost picture the (inevitable) tiktok/instagram style hashtag post of this book. It is filled with popular hashtag tropes and stuff. Tons of diversity repm check list like almost.

Now, there is a duke (but why? I mean why? Why does he have to be a duke?) but no worries, he gets preached on about his privilege a few times.

The plot and the agency setup, does not make much sense.

Still, probably 3 star read,

Audiobook, totally different from my previous ones (I do it on purpose, seems to make books more appetizing).

It is cute, so far, and in a real charm and not obnoxious way.

I like the narrator also!

"This part II really is a book about fandom.

Really. Unauthorized sequels and authorial criticism of it and telling fans how to tell it apart, story about fans interacting with the real life persons of the fiction they read, and eventually author going all canon-authority putting a damper on it, sniff...

It IS a book about being fans of books. Written 400 years ago for a whole different audience, mind you..."

I knew one of his books would have roaches, sooner or later. I knew it. Mr. never-saw-an-insect-he-did-not-like Tchaikovsky would include roaches sooner or later.

Surprisingly, I can deal with it, without problems.... So, uh, thanks?

And it is real space opera and really good at that.

Audiobook - a selfimposed challenge a bit, because of the australian narration which is fantastic and pleasant, but I need to THINK often or rewind to make sure I know what a word is and how it is written (just me not being used to).

Yearly, around January-February I find myself wanting to read about very hot places in Australia, lol...

Just a bit in, and I think I am going to LIKE this.

Fangirl perspective maybe - but this man is good at MOVING stuff along. There is some writing skill to writing the "right" scenes, which develop plot and characters, knowing what scenes are enough to tell the story, and he is so very good at that.

I got this audiobook in order to share it with a teen boy and for that it seems to be a good choice. It is one of those all-dialogue interview-diary style narratives with a full cast, I like that thing in audiobooks, and it is well done.

But the plotting seems to depend on smart scientists being a bit stupid often.. It is not a sophisticated story. Might be perfect for the teen though no pressure ...

There are exceptions, ocasionally, but this was not in the end one of them. Me and women's fiction (the genre, the bookclub subvariety) do not get along too well.

Meh.

It's nice and soothing, and interesting (nevermind some science stuff which at least makes for nicer scenes), but it keeps making me sleepy.

Which is not bad, actually, and might be a great literary niche - nice stuff which is sleep inducing!

I am mentally creating my own category of books which I call the american-ladies bookclub book. (And come on, it exists! It's a real genre. And it is not about if it is actually read by bookclubs no matter how big they are). And I am, geography aside that demographic precisely and these books should work for me...

But they often do not... This is good yes, but it is very bookclub...

Listening to it (along with a friend), a change of tone, and it the prose and narrator are a relief after a very silly fantasy (ah! YA actually!) novel I made myself finish.

So, on desktop the setting to do book status updates has disappeared. Anybody found any short cut? (The app I guess, but I HATE it and I am not sure if I have not un-installed it...)

I hope it is because of extra traffic over the reading challenge things, but I am not happy at all (and it is making me feel even less kind about the concept of reading challenges).

On my 2023 book resolutions to be repeated for 2024 - no guilt about not finishing books.

And here I am and will complete it, even if well it is getting worse and worse..

But I am recovering from cold/flu whatever, my brain is all melted, I am so tired that I can not handle PICKING a new book, or following anything more complex. Plus I am having criticizing the dialogue... and well, everything really

The narration is as trite as the writing.

I do not care what the publisher says (if it says any different). It is very YA.

The editing is odd, her name is related to Yarrow, what? And little sense of who the details, and what are the life plans of this FMC besides you know being the future FMC of a book, or much worldbuilding.

Very high production value audiobook, quite well done, even if it remains relatively shallow. Easy to listen to which is just the thing. Only final twist (oh, come on, there has to be one) left...

As a fantasy fan who is not interested in thematic junk collectibles nor in movie/tv adaptations (I can't be the only one, I am sure) it was interesting (if tedious) how much it all seemed to matter to Pratchett and Wilkins... And I guess to probably all authors. (I am "just the written fiction, please")

If you asked me about genres I would be very unlikely to read, one of the first that I would mention would be celebrity biographies.. And look at me now really enjoying this (1960s british cons! Letters from JRRT! Pratchett's granny...)

It depends on the celebrity, I guess...

Å·±¦ÓéÀÖ sending emails with "congrats-you're in the top X% of readers this year"!. FFS, Reading is not a competitive sport, I do not want to compare myself to others or myself, or whatever and I actually think challenges and goals and stuff is pernicious (or just pointless) to at least me.

READING IS NOT A COMPETITIVE SPORT, goodreads. It is not something one wins or gets ranked at.

And could not resist. 2023 is the year I read/listen to all published Tana French. It has been good.

And OMG the jam-marshmallow-coconut biscuits do exist! I googled it, expecting it was a figment of fertile imagination...

Narrator has an american accent. I was mourning the lack of irish accents but then he switches to Irish accents for dialogue and it's fantastic. No idea if they are realistic but all sound good.

Series structure is quite different according to genre. Romance series usually have one volume equals one couple and one successful pairing and just secondary characters in common and then seeing happily together couples in subsequent volumes.

This series is structured like a romance series. This last volume is basically sending time with characters of previous books, many many many of them,...Not working for me.

"I was also fired many times over, although one quickly learned that Terry, being a writer, had an experimental interest in saying things to see what they sounded like, and that if you adopted an experimental approach yourself, and simply turned up the next day, it would normally turn out that you hadn’t been fired at all."

So I was compiling a list of books for 2024; but could not resist keep reading this......

I could not resist...(I do not remember as much from previous books I would have thought I did, but it is still very readable...)

Valentina starts out as a prig, but I guess that is the point.

And the readability quality of Shinn is really amazing - I have no idea what makes it so easy to follow page by page...

There is an audiobook in english, and spanish. But not portuguese (and of course, Portuguese only for this). It is really sad, or reflections of a very small market, this would be so very sublime in the hands of a few actors I can think of.

As it is, I respect the experiment I do, but typograpical conventions do make reading so so much easier...It really keeps throwing me off...

So good, best of the series. Her at top (peak?) of her powers.

A really good fantasy romance and then she goes and throws more fantasy stuff in there with oh so many ideas for next books.

I do not even know whose book I want very very badly next...

And not finished, just a bug with % and "page/hour" number...

This might be heresy or mean of me or something, but Meryl Streep (currently aged 74) is sounding a little bit old for for the narrator (who would have been born around 1968 or so and 52 in 2020?). She sounds like a grandmother to those girls not their 50ish mother. She is very good at many things, but I am not sure this was perfect casting or she the perfect narrator for this.

Sorry, but not sorry.

I hope the rest lives up to the start, but you know those books which make your toes curl? Yes.

It is very funny, yet again (but seriously, even more than the 2 previous Paladin books( and I love the characters.

This is why I do not make best of the year lists in November... There is still time for more best books (crossing fingers I am not jinxing myself...)

Am I imagining this or "Meg Shaffer"´s "debut" novel was on the finalists for the goodreads choice awards and seems to have disappeared from the final list, count?

I was outraged about it, actually, in case it won.. But I am not imagining it was there, right?

/choiceaward...

Did they quietly remove it?