Shilo Quetchenbach > Recent Status Updates

I love this book so much. It's the ultimate comfort read for when I feel myself falling into a book slump

This is... fine I guess? It's confusing mostly. So far it's a locked room murder mystery with creepy automatons that are just sort of there and a weird marriage contract thing and I'm not really seeing the romance yet. It's another book that makes me not want to read it so I've resorted to comfort reads because it makes it so hard to read anything else

Kiddo is still really enjoying this and it may be the first fiction book we've managed to finish in a really long time.

So far so good! Kiddo (11) usually nopes out of books when there’s the barest hint of suspense, but he thus for seems to be hooked. This is the most successful fiction book we’ve read (aside from the Carpet People) since he discovered Upside-Down Magic in 3rd grade.

This is delightful! It's so funny and I love how irreverent it is.

This is not going the way I expected which is a lot of fun. The time travel came as a complete surprise but now that I've had a minute to get used to it I'm really enjoying it. Can't wait to find out how everything gets tied together.

This is delightful! I'm really really enjoying the slow building of trust between Benny and Rio. And the quirky cast of sideshow characters are so much fun.

Trying to read this on audio just isn't working for some reason. Gonna try the ebook instead. I think having the narrators switch every story just doesn't work for me. So far I really like the first story, like the second a lot, and might have to revisit the next couple because they didn't stick in my mind.

reading this with kiddo (11). We haven't gotten far yet--just to where they're all going to set out on the adventure the next day. He found the part where all the dwarves show up for tea absolutely hilarious, mostly because of the word "throng" which was apparantly the most hilarious thing he'd ever heard.

I'm enjoying this one more than the last one. It feels less like Nita and Kit are being dragged around by fate and more like they're making their own decisions.

This is better than the previous two books but hard to read because of the overwhelming sense of creeping/looming dread. I have enough of that in real life right now. I probably would have enjoyed this more had I read it last year.

Kiddo (almost 11) is really enjoying this one. I am as well. It's fascinating information, and I'd never considered how animals don't experience the world in the same way we do.

Kiddo (almost 11) is fascinated by the ways animal senses differ from our own

This book is enjoyable but some things about it are really frustrating.

I wasn't sure about this at first, as there was an awful lot of the "Oh, I wish I knew then what I know now" hand-wringing, but it's grown on me. The characters are interesting, as is the school. I like the old-fashioned slowness of it - it fits the time period (immediately post WWI but in a world with magic). I'm really enjoying the audio even though it's slow going because it's immersive.

The cultural judging in all four of these books has been really intense. I'm enjoying the story, however, and I like that we don't know who the murderer is yet at the halfway point. I actually have no idea. Tris is an interesting character and it's fun to read her POV.

I enjoyed this a bit more than the previous one. I like Briar the best of the four children and I liked Evvy a LOT more than Pasco. It was also highly amusing to see Briar channeling Rosethorn as his teaching method.

The audiobook, however, is TERRIBLE. The children all have high-pitched annoying voices. Every chapter break, there is this 10 second or so long chiming / bonging sound. At chapter ends it repeats.

This is a great follow up to two recent books we read. One on climate change and one on the history of voting rights and racism. This brings the two topics together really nicely.

I was really looking forward to this one but it's just... boring. Like, things happen (slooooowly) but I don't care about any of the characters so I don't care about anything of the things that happen? I'm really glad I decided not to preorder it and just wait for the library to get it. It feels very telling not showing

Really not enjoying this one. The premise sounded so good, but the execution is lacking. The plot doesn't make any sense and the audiobook narrator is really getting on my nerves.

contemplating a dnf on this one. I have really enjoyed Dietrich's books in the past, but this one is just too flat and immature and both characters POVs are indistinguishable

this is a short book that is taking me forever to finish because it just isn't grabbing me. I have tried in print and in audio format and keep stalling out around 30%. The writing is beautiful, but I can't figure out why I should care about anything that happens.

Not sure about this one yet. My gut is telling me to drop it because the characters are both kind of unlikeable and the story feels contrived. It's just a little too antagonistic for me. The audiobook narrators are also slightly annoying. But maybe I'm just not in a Christmas mood?

This was not what I was expecting. It's fascinating and weirdly compelling, but I'm not in the mood for weird and unsettling right now so I'm putting it aside for a time I can appreciate it more fully, because in the right mood I will love it.

I'm really enjoying this. It's really interesting watching the four kids' magic being slowly revealed. The kids are all interesting and I always get disappointed when we switch to the next POV because I always want to stay with the previous one - until I get used to it and then bam! time to switch again. It makes it feel like each new revelation about them is being slowly parceled out.

A promising start. At times a little too convenient, and adults are all useless.

This is making me realize that I need to clarify my problems with the previous "it's all about sex" book I read. Because while that one felt like mashing fleshy bits together and nothing else, this one feels stunning and transcendant because Alexis Hall is a phenomenal writer who can make a sex scene about surrender and revelation and connection and joy where I almost forget I'm reading a sex scene.

This has a lot of good information about how the government works and all kinds of government programs (taxes, medicare, social security, etc) but is very dry. Kiddo (10), however, is eating it up as a bedtime story. I suspect we'll be moving into reading straight up textbooks as bedtime stories next lol.

I love this book so much. It's such an unconventional Sleeping Beauty retelling, and so unexpectedly delightful. Rosie is as un-princess-like as a princess can be and therefore charming. All of the characters are absolutely wonderful and feel so very real.

kiddo (11) is *really* enjoying this one. One thing that surprises me is how the author is very careful to not mention *any* names when giving examples of different forms of misinformation and disinformation. She's probably trying to keep from being labeled "political" but when there are glaring omissions or she uses the 1980s tobacco industry instead of Trump for an example of purposeful disinformation it feels off