reading wednesday

[boxofdelights]

My reading brain seems to be coming out of lockdown. I'm reading The Breath of the Sun by Isaac Fellman for SF book group. I managed to read This is how you lose the time war by Amal El-Mohtar and Max Gladstone for last month's SF book group. One nice thing about having book group online is that someone I really like who has moved away has been joining us, and both my kids, who are not in the book group but loved This is how you lose joined us last month.

Next I will read The Hidden Life of Trees by Peter Wohlleben for Tawanda book group. I was thinking of choosing The Overstory Richard Powers for my month, but it isn't out in paperback! It would go so well with this book and with Braiding Sweetgrass, which I chose last year.


Movies I watched from the library in the time of coronavirus:

The Sisters Brothers
Bumblebee
The Milagro Beanfield War
The Muppets
E.T.
Jumnaji: the Next Level
Jojo Rabbit
Hustlers
Queen & Slim
The Chi, season 1
If Beale Street Could Talk

I watched things on Kanopy and Netflix too, but I don't know how to see my history there.

Comments

[luzula]

I'm reading The Breath of the Sun by Isaac Fellman for SF book group.

Huh, that's on my list of books to check out. How do you like it?

[boxofdelights]

I liked it a lot, even though it is mostly about trying to climb an impossibly tall mountain. It doesn't do anything for the people who read SF in order to think about "how would that work, exactly?"

If you read it, you have to tolerate the fact that they have no idea how tall the mountain is. It could be 60,000 feet. It could be 330,000 feet. It could rise above the atmosphere. It could make the planet unstable. They have no idea. They're arguing about whether the mountain is God, or the body of God, or the home of God, or the place from where you can see God's home.

[ljgeoff]

I'm reading Mantel's Wolf Hall and loving it So Much. I haven't enjoyed a read like this in years. So subtle and sparse.

[jesse_the_k]

A pal just told me this morning she was reading both Overstory and Trees and her head was exploding!

How did you like Queen & Slim?

[boxofdelights]

If you are emotionally prepared for a heartbreaker that makes you scared for two hours before delivering the inevitable final blow, it is a great movie.

Thank YOU!

[jesse_the_k]

Okay that sounds terrifying. I'm so grateful I have the choice to shift that to another timeline.

[wordweaverlynn]

Oh my. The Milagro Beanfield War was a lovely book, and the movie was pretty. However, I seem to recall that the scene at the end where everyone is dancing in the beanfield was presented as a harvest dance. The beans weren't even knee-high yet. Of course, I haven't seen the movie since it came out, so I could be remembering it wrong.

[boxofdelights]

Nope, you are right, it takes a lot more time to grow beans than to shoot a movie.

[bibliofile]

One of my book groups discussed Time war last night. Most people either liked it or hated it -- not much in the middle ground.

The people who hated it wanted more explanation about the currently inexplicable things, like time travel, the timing of the letters, and the coding of the letters. People can be very concrete sometimes. The ones who liked it saw it as an epistolary romance and were able to suspend disbelief on all the things that seem highly improbable now.

And we just added our first second-generation member, too. How cool is that?! Who joined us temporarily for the Harry Potter books, but now is joining by video in time to go off to grad school.

[bibliofile]

p.s. - The Overstory is awesome, and it is out in trade paperback. It's so long, I don't know if it will ever come out in a small paperback. (You think they'd announce it soon, as the trade paperback came out in April 2019.)

[boxofdelights]

Thanks! I didn't know about the trade paperback.