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Book Logging
Beard, Mary. SPQR: A History of Ancient Rome - Audiobook read by Phyllida Nash. I think that my ability to pay attention to this suffered from listening to it in close proximity to Mike Duncan's History of Rome podcast. I kept zoning out.
de Bodard, Aliette. The Tea Master and the Detective - I liked this better than I expected to based reading reviews. I wasn’t surprised by the character development beats for the point of view character, but I didn’t feel like that was the point. The mystery plot wasn’t either. I found the overall pattern satisfying.
Jones, Kelly. Unusual Chickens for the Exceptional Poultry Farmer - There were a lot of world building questions left hanging at the end of this book. The character stuff tied up, though, and I don't think things are otherwise set for a sequel, but there are chickens with superpowers. Where did they come from? Why chickens with superpowers instead of, I don't know, cows? Or skunks? Or coyotes? Or rabbits? Do these chickens have populations in the wild somewhere or are these few all there is? There's a story here about a family finding a new home, and there's a lot of humor in the letters the main character writes, but I want the world building. All of it.
Lackey, Mercedes. The Hills Have Spies - I had to work at getting through this one because I wasn’t in the right mood for it. This one has actual plot with evil, evil, evil taking up about a third of the book. I didn’t want that. I wanted a Valdemar slice of life book, and this is not that.
Leckie, Ann. Ancillary Justice - Audiobook read by Celeste Ciulla. I stalled out on this for a very long time because I didn’t want to deal with the backstory in the detail that the author chose to. I understand why she did; it just made the book difficult for me. I don’t do well with seeing disaster coming as something inevitable. I’m not sure that the audiobook quite works-- The reader has definite voices for each character who speaks, and it’s often clear which ones the reader thinks are male and which female. Because this is a first person narrative, that undermines the idea that the narrator isn’t taking note of secondary sexual characteristics. I was kind of eh on the story as a whole. I didn’t hate it; I didn’t love it. I might or might not bother with the rest of the series. I suppose it will depend on whether or not the library still has the audiobook version when I get through more of the audiobooks in my queue. I think it’s that the part of the story that I’d have found most interesting was the two decades that were elided.
McCall Smith, Alexander. Precious and Grace - Audiobook read by Lisette Lecat. I stalled out on this one for quite a while because I got stressed out (in spite of knowing that things had to be okay). If I'd had a paper book, I'd have skipped ahead a couple of pages and then gone back. Audiobooks don't give me that luxury. This is part of a very long series and is very much more of the same thing. I don't think it's the right place to start the series which is kind of an ambling character narrative rather than anything with a great deal of tension/suspense. This is another of those series that gets marketed as mysteries but really isn't.
Nye, Bill. Unstoppable - Audiobook read by Bill Nye. I'm not sure how I managed to finish this one. I agree with a lot of things Nye says here and elsewhere, but for some reason, listening to him talk about them makes me want to punch him. I know that's an unusual reaction and that he's beloved by many. I just find the combination of his voice with his words horribly irritating.
Quick, Amanda. The Other Lady Vanishes - This is a pretty standard book for Quick/Krentz/Castle. I'm not sure about the shift in time period for Quick's books because I keep forgetting, while reading these, that I'm in the 1930s instead of the 1990s or even later. That doesn't affect my enjoyment of the popcorn plots particularly, but it does make these Quick books blur into the author's Krentz books. I think that the fact that these are set in the US and on the West Coast doesn't help that confusion at all.
Tan, Shaun. Rules of Summer - This is a picture book. I got it because I’ve enjoyed Tan’s other work and figured it would be a quick read (I’m almost certain this is another title I pulled from last year’s Yuletide requests). It was, but the illustrations imply a much bigger, more complicated, and less mundane world that I think could spark a lot of fascinating stories. I’m not sure the text even amounts to drabble length, but I want to study the illustrations and figure out what I think is going on.
Yang, JY. The Red Threads of Fortune - I liked this better than The Black Tides of Heaven in terms of feeling as if this was a story. The Black Tides of Heaven felt more like it was world building with a lot of disconnected things happening that never quite linked coherently. This has more unified movement in terms of both plot and character development. I'm not sure it would work as well without the information I got from the other book, however.
Started but not finished:
DuMont, Brianna. Thrilling Thieves: Liars, Cheats, and Cons Who Changed History - This is kind of breezy and superficial and decidedly aimed at 8-10 year olds. I started it and got bored with the sections on Venice and Pizarro. I ended up skipping ahead and reading the sections dealing with people I hadn't heard of or didn't know much about. I was going to skip the section on Thomas Edison, but I ended up reading it when I realized that it was very narrowly focused on Edison and the film industry.
Schwartz, Virginia Frances. 4 Kids in 5E & 1 Crazy Year - I had a nasty headache when I tried to read this and ended up not feeling like I could go back to it because the headache echoed. Nothing to do with the book.
de Bodard, Aliette. The Tea Master and the Detective - I liked this better than I expected to based reading reviews. I wasn’t surprised by the character development beats for the point of view character, but I didn’t feel like that was the point. The mystery plot wasn’t either. I found the overall pattern satisfying.
Jones, Kelly. Unusual Chickens for the Exceptional Poultry Farmer - There were a lot of world building questions left hanging at the end of this book. The character stuff tied up, though, and I don't think things are otherwise set for a sequel, but there are chickens with superpowers. Where did they come from? Why chickens with superpowers instead of, I don't know, cows? Or skunks? Or coyotes? Or rabbits? Do these chickens have populations in the wild somewhere or are these few all there is? There's a story here about a family finding a new home, and there's a lot of humor in the letters the main character writes, but I want the world building. All of it.
Lackey, Mercedes. The Hills Have Spies - I had to work at getting through this one because I wasn’t in the right mood for it. This one has actual plot with evil, evil, evil taking up about a third of the book. I didn’t want that. I wanted a Valdemar slice of life book, and this is not that.
Leckie, Ann. Ancillary Justice - Audiobook read by Celeste Ciulla. I stalled out on this for a very long time because I didn’t want to deal with the backstory in the detail that the author chose to. I understand why she did; it just made the book difficult for me. I don’t do well with seeing disaster coming as something inevitable. I’m not sure that the audiobook quite works-- The reader has definite voices for each character who speaks, and it’s often clear which ones the reader thinks are male and which female. Because this is a first person narrative, that undermines the idea that the narrator isn’t taking note of secondary sexual characteristics. I was kind of eh on the story as a whole. I didn’t hate it; I didn’t love it. I might or might not bother with the rest of the series. I suppose it will depend on whether or not the library still has the audiobook version when I get through more of the audiobooks in my queue. I think it’s that the part of the story that I’d have found most interesting was the two decades that were elided.
McCall Smith, Alexander. Precious and Grace - Audiobook read by Lisette Lecat. I stalled out on this one for quite a while because I got stressed out (in spite of knowing that things had to be okay). If I'd had a paper book, I'd have skipped ahead a couple of pages and then gone back. Audiobooks don't give me that luxury. This is part of a very long series and is very much more of the same thing. I don't think it's the right place to start the series which is kind of an ambling character narrative rather than anything with a great deal of tension/suspense. This is another of those series that gets marketed as mysteries but really isn't.
Nye, Bill. Unstoppable - Audiobook read by Bill Nye. I'm not sure how I managed to finish this one. I agree with a lot of things Nye says here and elsewhere, but for some reason, listening to him talk about them makes me want to punch him. I know that's an unusual reaction and that he's beloved by many. I just find the combination of his voice with his words horribly irritating.
Quick, Amanda. The Other Lady Vanishes - This is a pretty standard book for Quick/Krentz/Castle. I'm not sure about the shift in time period for Quick's books because I keep forgetting, while reading these, that I'm in the 1930s instead of the 1990s or even later. That doesn't affect my enjoyment of the popcorn plots particularly, but it does make these Quick books blur into the author's Krentz books. I think that the fact that these are set in the US and on the West Coast doesn't help that confusion at all.
Tan, Shaun. Rules of Summer - This is a picture book. I got it because I’ve enjoyed Tan’s other work and figured it would be a quick read (I’m almost certain this is another title I pulled from last year’s Yuletide requests). It was, but the illustrations imply a much bigger, more complicated, and less mundane world that I think could spark a lot of fascinating stories. I’m not sure the text even amounts to drabble length, but I want to study the illustrations and figure out what I think is going on.
Yang, JY. The Red Threads of Fortune - I liked this better than The Black Tides of Heaven in terms of feeling as if this was a story. The Black Tides of Heaven felt more like it was world building with a lot of disconnected things happening that never quite linked coherently. This has more unified movement in terms of both plot and character development. I'm not sure it would work as well without the information I got from the other book, however.
Started but not finished:
DuMont, Brianna. Thrilling Thieves: Liars, Cheats, and Cons Who Changed History - This is kind of breezy and superficial and decidedly aimed at 8-10 year olds. I started it and got bored with the sections on Venice and Pizarro. I ended up skipping ahead and reading the sections dealing with people I hadn't heard of or didn't know much about. I was going to skip the section on Thomas Edison, but I ended up reading it when I realized that it was very narrowly focused on Edison and the film industry.
Schwartz, Virginia Frances. 4 Kids in 5E & 1 Crazy Year - I had a nasty headache when I tried to read this and ended up not feeling like I could go back to it because the headache echoed. Nothing to do with the book.