EPBOT Readers discussion

Hello Everyone,

I hope everyone had a good few weeks. Mine have been eventful. We were on a schooner cruise with 20 (random) passengers and 8 crew. The sailing and weather were great. We returned Saturday, and Monday afternoon started cold symptoms. One friend tested positive. I tested negative until yesterday although my symptoms were/are improving. No fever. My husband has similar symptoms but has tested negative (including PCR tests). My first PCR test returned an official result of "Inconclusive". Who knew that was one of the options! My 2nd test, 48 hours later was positive. Right now I'm mostly tired.

I only have one finish, The Eighty-Year-Old Sorority Girls. This is for my neighborhood book club (and my suggestion). I gave it three stars. It was okay for me. The author had written some non-fiction books but this was her first novel. It is kind of a combination of Beaches and Steel Magnolias. It was cozy, no stress, but had a couple rough edges.

I am just starting What Happened To You?: Conversations on Trauma, Resilience, and Healing for a town non-fiction book club that is just starting up. We'll see how the book and this club goes. This is the 2nd similar genre of non-fiction they've read. I hope they expand their NF realm out of self-help style books.

I am still listening to Zoe's Tale. I didn't do any listening on the schooner so this was paused. It is likable enough. Sometimes the snark is a bit over the top. But it is engaging in typical Scalzi fashion. I know some people who skipped over this in the Old Man's War series but I'm glad I didn't.

QOTW: What did you think of required reading in school? What books do you remember or were memorable from school?

Although I loved to read I was not really a fan of required reading. I was not great at symbolism and meta themes.

I remember The Jungle, Animal Farm in Social Studies classes. I remember Paradise Lost and The Inferno from AP English (where the running joke in the class was "When in doubt, just say Milton."). In middle school I remember The Outsiders. That's all I remember but I'm sure there were more. There were some Shakespeare plays and such but those were in-class as opposed to required reading outside.

Hi All,

Book club Winner of the poll was the The Sunbearer Trials, by one vote! It'll be the book until the end of the year, so plenty of time to get copies and get it read.

Sorry I missed another check in last week. Was my birthday weekend, so was hectic with getting the yard re-sodded, busy work week, getting house prepped for party, planning it last minute etc. It was nice though, first time having a party since :gesturing at everything:. Had about 12 people which was a nice number, not too huge but not like no one showed up. Considering that things were so hectic that I didn't actually invite people until 3 days before it, I was satisfied with turn out.

Things have been so hectic, reading has been slowed so in spite of not checking in I only read a couple things:

A Desolation Called Peace - I really liked this, went in directions I didn't expect at all. Not sure if there's plans to continue the series, but it certainly feels like there's room for it.

Woman, Eating - the premise for this sounded so fascinating, but the execution fell really flat for me. A vampire obsessed with human food, being an artist and watching food content on youtube? interesting take! In actuality it just felt like it meandered all over the place, did a lot of wallowing, and then ended without really resolving much of anything. It was short and took me forever to get through.

Terminal Peace - audio book conclusion to the series. I really loved this! The whole series sounds like kooky fluff on paper. But it was really a great sci fi series, and some really interesting takes on aliens, post apocolyptic scenarios, intergalactic wars etc. I'd say it's maybe not AS amazing as Becky Chambers as far as just really making me love the characters, but if you like Becky Chambers Wayfarer series you'd probably really enjoy this one.

currently reading:

Nona the Ninth - this is living up to being a locked tomb book, basically meaning I'm very confused, feeling the edges of what is going on, and i figure it'll all suddenly punch me in the face in a couple hundred pages and i will devour the ending and then cry until Alecto comes out. I will 100% need to do a back to back readthrough of the entire series once it's complete.

Spinning Silver- audio re-read

QOTW:

I'm not opposed to the idea of required reading. There's plenty of kids who wouldn't read without encouragement, and i think guiding students towards literature that is important/classic/enriching isn't a bad thing. Having everyone read the same thing and discuss it can be really beneficial. I just really feel like schools need to do a better job at keeping required reading lists current and updated. If I was still reading the same required reading that my mother was reading when SHE was in high school, and kids today are still reading the same stuff I read when I was in high school...I feel like that's kind of a problem. Not saying there can't be ANY over lap, some classics are timeless for a reason. But why do reading lists have to be completely static? I feel like its hard to really foster a love of reading if the only thing you're being forced to read in school is literature from decades before you were born, in language that is out of date, with out of date attitudes, situations you don't encounter etc. There should be modern literature as well, that kids would be excited to read. I'm not saying Twilight or the latest book trending on booktok has to be on the list, but there are books of modern literature that have merit that deal with modern issues that can be valuable to read.

I LOVE reading, and i'm really glad I got that love back in elementary school before middle school and high school kicked in. Because I'm pretty sure slogging through Of Mice and Men, and the Scarlet Letter and A Separate Peace and Heart of Darkness would have killed any love of reading I had if I wasn't happily tearing through books I liked on my own prior to reading those.

I hope you feel better soon, Susan!

Murder Most Actual - Alexis Hall writes LGBTQ+ romance, but he is clearly also a mystery fan (I have already read his Lovecraftian Sherlock Holmes pastiche). This is a sort of send-up of the country house murder, involving a true-crime podcaster and her wife whose attempt at a marriage-reviving vacation is derailed by a series of deaths. Like some of his other work, the central couple were realistic but the supporting characters were basically caricatures - in this case, stock types from various styles of mystery. It was not amazing, but entertaining for someone who is also a fan of the genre. Goodreads says it's a "Kobo original" but I was able to read it through Libby.

The Bald Eagle: The Improbable Journey of America's Bird - So this was about the rise of the bald eagle as a symbol contrasted with its decline as a real bird. I didn't greatly enjoy the extensive history stuff, because I am me, and I also thought the author spent too much time waxing...any number of adjectives that might follow that verb, but this was still enjoyable.

Heads of the Colored People - This is a collection of short stories that are basically all gut punches. They are written extremely well and involve very different stakes, but they all hit hard. I would say they're mostly about blackness in various ways. There were some characters recurring across the stories, which was interesting. It's a debut, and I would absolutely read more of this author's work in the future, but this was about as much as I could handle at once.

QOTW: Yeah, I remember feeling like reading books for school ruined them. I would read the whole thing all at once as soon as it was issued, instead of just the assigned pages, so I could react to it on my own before class discussion and such. I feel like now I appreciate at least the idea of discussion and identifying symbolism and all that, but it probably doesn't help to do it with a bunch of uninterested kids. Also I think I had to mature a bit to appreciate some of the things they were trying to point out to us.
Sheri, I agree with you on the need for more diversity. There was a whole lot of stuff by long-deceased white men on the list. More contemporary works could certainly be included, and I do see the value of reading older books, but they don't have to be the same old books. When I read Passing I immediately thought we should have read that instead of Gatsby.
I did always love Shakespeare, though. Somehow school couldn't ruin Shakespeare.

Expanding my thoughts on the required reading, to include a Proud Mom story about a program our local high school did for a few years when some of my kids were there. It was called One School One Book and the kids in all grades (9-12) all read the same book over the summer and then there was a program about it in September. When my middle child was a junior she got herself on the OSOB committee as a student representative. She convinced them to pick The Fault in Our Stars when it was a recent release. There was considerable push-back from some faculty on the committee because the main characters have sex once (I think that was the reason). But my daughter still/somehow persuaded them to choose it.

She also was a major force in planning the school-wide events for the day. The book is dedicated to Esther Earl who died of cancer and had participated in Nerd Fighteria with John&Hank Green. My daughter knew Esther's mom, Lori, from performing at a fundraising event for the charity the Earl's set up in Esther's memory (This Star Won't Go Out) in the Boston area. Lori Earl came to our high school for the whole day to help with various programs and discuss teen cancer. Lori also contacted John Green and he Skyped in for a few hours for a live Q&A and discussion of the book.

The OSOB programs in other years paled in comparison.

Proud mom moment indeed! That's very cool :)

Not much energy for reading the past few weeks (start of the school year and all). I re-read The Forgotten Beasts of Eld for my other group's monthly discussion, and it was as lovely as I remembered. Patricia A. McKillip's prose is so lyrical and dreamy.

Only other finish was The Poisoner's Handbook: Murder and the Birth of Forensic Medicine in Jazz Age New York, which I've been meaning to read for years. It was SO fascinating. Highly recommended if you like nonfiction science history!

QOTW: Despite being a big reader I've never really enjoyed literature classes because dissecting a book often killed my enjoyment of the story. I always went into required reading thinking I wasn't going to like the book, and I do clearly remember the first time I liked a book I had to read for school and realizing that sometimes classics are classic for a reason (it was A Separate Peace). My favorite lit class I ever took was a semester of Russian lit in high school with my favorite teacher (she was my biology teacher, actually, but she taught a lit elective every semester just because she wanted to. I adored her and she's probably a huge part of the reason I am a science teacher today).

I do agree that literature reading lists need an update - students need to be reading books by authors that are not dead white guys.

I was out of town last week, so checking in a little late!

Finshed:
The Sunbearer Trials - I had a lot of fun with this one. I'll probably drop by the discussion and see if I can add some thoughts.

Nona the Ninth - I was confused for a lot of it, but I loved it. Like Sheri said, someday, I'm going to reread this entire series all together and catch all the little clues and hints, probably once the last book is out.

Aces Wild: A Heist - Despite the "A Heist" tagline, there wasn't much of an actual heist, but I still enjoyed the story and the characters, and the discussion of different forms and types of asexuality. The main character and his friends are all part of an online ace community.

The Perfect Crimes of Marian Hayes - I loved this. I hope there's more in this series.

Comics:
The Sandman: The Deluxe Edition, Book Four
The Sandman: The Deluxe Edition, Book Five

Currently reading:
I am just starting Star Wars: The Princess and the Scoundrel. I'm not far enough to have an opinion yet, but Han and Leia were my first ever fandom ship before I even knew the concept of "shipping", so I'm hoping this will be good.

QOTW:
I had mixed feelings on required reading. I was also such a fast reader in school that I would either finish way before the rest of the class, or have to force myself not to read ahead all the time.

I think I also got lucky and had a number of teachers who picked books outside the normal 'dead white guys' oeuvre. One of my favorite books I read in school was The Color Purple. I also remember reading The Outsiders. I loved reading Shakespeare, and we also read Cyrano and Dr. Faust. I also liked reading Pride and Prejudice.

My least favorite required reading was stuff that I found hard to relate to or tedious. Middlemarch, Madame Bovary, Jude the Obscure, Billy Budd, Sailor are the ones I remember disliking the most. Oh, and my most hated: Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance: An Inquiry Into Values - this was one teacher's pet favorite so he assigned it to the class and I despised it.