boxofdelights

• What are you reading?

The Summer Birds, by Penelope Farmer, because of rachelmanija's recommendation.

• What did you recently finish reading?

The Tea Master and the Detective, by Aliette de Bodard. I think this is the right length de Bodard for me. The other one I've tried was The House of Shattered Wings, which had a similar flavor: melancholy, lots that is unspoken and maybe unspeakable, communication that is clearly conveying much more to the characters than I will ever understand. Maybe it is just too grown-up a flavor for me.

• What do you think you’ll read next?

I want to read all the good books for eleven-year-olds. Here's my list so far:
https://www.goodreads.com/review/list/7530468-boxofdelights?shelf=eleven
Suggestions and comments are welcome. No need to read through my list to make sure your suggestion is not on it; more mentions of a book make me more likely to read it.

• What are you watching?

Russian Doll, whenever I get some wifi.

Bad Times at the El Royale. Violent but worth it.

Tully. Really good.

A Wrinkle in Time.
1. This movie is so beautiful.
2. I am okay with it being its own thing, even though it has more love and less math than I would have chosen.
3. I have a surprising sore spot that this movie hit when the Happy Medium, urging Meg to find her balance, yelled, "You can do this, you’re choosing not to."

I don't have a sense of balance, not like most people do. I don't have a thing in my head that is constantly telling me what direction 'down' is. I have a substitute that I have manufactured for myself, from seeing horizontals and feeling pressure against the soles of my feet.

Most likely I was born this way. The nerve endings in my left ear never got finished. My parents noticed that I was deaf in one ear when I was five, but I didn't figure out the balance problem until I was an adult. Fortunately I don't have vertigo because my baby brain was still plastic enough to realize that the signal from my inner ear is not worth listening to.

The balance mechanism in my right ear still works, but the brain interprets any signal from right ear + no signal from left ear = 'down' is whatever direction the right ear is pointing. When I was a kid I used to sit in a swing, raise my feet and close my eyes, to get the illusion that I was spinning, very slowly, clockwise. I was always surprised to open my eyes and see that the swing's chains were not twisted together.

So the yoga exercise that has you stand on one foot, find your balance, and then close your eyes fells me like a tree. It was an immense relief to learn that no, I'm not choosing not to, I just can't.

• What are you reading?

So Lucky, by Nicola Griffith. This is so hard to read, because Mara loses so much, both physically and socially, so fast. I know that this is one of the possibilities but it isn't one I want to think about right now. I hope I get to see Mara figuring out how to pursue happiness in the body she has.

• What did you recently finish reading?

An Excess Male, by Maggie Shen King. Really good. I'm looking forward to talking about it with SF book group.

• What do you think you’ll read next?

The Waste Land, by T.S. Eliot, for Classics book group.

• What are you watching?

Coherence.
Eighth Grade, which expressed the feeling of eighth grade so well that I was dying of embarrassment all through. Kayla is so brave, and she works so hard!

• What are you reading?

Have cold. Not reading. Head full of snot.

• What did you recently finish reading?

I finished Chronicle of a Death Foretold, by Gabriel Garcia Marquez, last month, for Classics book group, which is tomorrow. I would like to go. I always enjoy this group, even when I dislike the book. I think it's true that after you've had a cold for a week, you're not shedding the virus anymore even if you're still symptomatic.

• What do you think you’ll read next?

An Excess Male, by Maggie Shen King, for SF book group.

• What are you watching?

Killing Eve, with Neal and Rosemary, so I can't just binge it.
Have also watched On the Basis of Sex, in theater with Tawanda book group. And Being John Malkovich, Adam's Rib, Finding Your Feet, Swallows and Amazons, Love's Labours Lost, and Thoroughbreds at home.

• What are you reading?

Word by Word, by Kory Stamper. I gave this, That Inevitable Victorian Thing, and Record of a Spaceborn Few to Nixie for Jolabokaflod, but she was traveling with only a backpack and did not take them back to Portland with her.

• What did you recently finish reading?

Harriet the Spy, by Louise Fitzhugh. The best book about being eleven.

• What do you think you’ll read next?

We Are Legion, by Dennis Taylor, for SF bookgroup.


I watched Rumble: The Indians Who Rocked the World, a documentary about Native American and First Nations musicians in rock. Even though the DVD does not have subtitles, so I did not catch every word, it was well worth watching.
There is a lot of beauty, both visual and aural, in this movie, but I have to warn for a few photographs of state-sponsored mass murder, with the perpetrators standing proudly in their uniforms over the bodies of their victims, and some photos and brief videos of police brutally assaulting people of color.
Also there are people who talk about things that are not genetic being "in your blood", but they mean well.

Still not sure whether this was fun!

I drifted away from participating in the Goodreads community discussions back in April. Last week I went back to my list to see what I could fill in from the books I've read this year. I did keep up pretty well on noting all the books I read in Goodreads. I read a few last-minute books to fill gaps. I resisted the temptation to stick Sea of Rust in for the prompt "A Western" or The Marrow Thieves for the prompt "A book with a fruit or vegetable in the title". I think I've got 46 fills out of 67 prompts. √ means I read the book; a book title without a √ means that I picked something out for the prompts but didn't read it. I'm going to put those on Mount TBR for next year.

2018 Popsugar Reading Challenge

1. A book made into a movie you've already seen – A Monster Calls
√ 2. True Crime - Killers of the Flower Moon: The Osage Murders and the Birth of the FBI
3. The next book in a series you started - The Obelisk Gate
4. A book involving a heist
5. Nordic noir
√ 6. A novel based on a real person – Be Prepared
√ 7. A book set in a country that fascinates you – Chronicle of a Death Foretold
√ 8. A book with a time of day in the title – I Shall Wear Midnight
[DNF] 9. A book about a villain or antihero – The Traitor Baru Cormorant
√ 10. A book about death or grief - Can't We Talk about Something More Pleasant?
√ 11. A book with a female author who uses a male pseudonym – Houston Houston Do You Read
√ 12. A book with an LGBTQ+ protagonist – Tell Me What You Like
√ 13. A book that is also a stage play or musical – The Real Inspector Hound
√ 14. A book by an author of a different ethnicity than you – Sing, Unburied, Sing
√ 15. A book about feminism - We Should All Be Feminists
√ 16. A book about mental health - Eliza and Her Monsters
17. A book you borrowed or that was given to you as a gift - A Glorious Freedom: Older Women Leading Extraordinary Lives
√ 18. A book by two authors - Gena/Finn
√ 19. A book about or involving a sport - You and a Bike and a Road
√ 20. A book by a local author – I Met a Traveller in an Antique Land
√ 21. A book with your favorite color in the title – Devil in a Blue Dress
√ 22. A book with alliteration in the title – The Lamb Will Slaughter the Lion
√ 23. A book about time travel – Paper Girls
√ 24. A book with a weather element in the title – The Other Wind
√ 25. A book set at sea – Ocean Meets Sky
√ 26. A book with an animal in the title - H is for Hawk
√ 27. A book set on a different planet - The Best of All Possible Worlds
28. A book with song lyrics in the title – number9dream
29. A book about or set on Halloween - A Night in the Lonesome October
√ 30. A book with characters who are twins – Castle Hangnail
31. A book mentioned in another book
√ 32. A book from a celebrity book club - The Gate to Women's Country
√ 33. A childhood classic you've never read - The Girl with the Silver Eyes
√ 34. A book that's published in 2018 - The Hazel Wood
35. A past Goodreads Choice Awards winner - Hyperbole and a Half: Unfortunate Situations, Flawed Coping Mechanisms, Mayhem, and Other Things That Happened
√ 36. A book set in the decade you were born - Harriet the Spy
37. A book you meant to read in 2017 but didn't get to
√ 38. A book with an ugly cover - The XY
√ 39. A book that involves a bookstore or library - The Little Paris Bookshop
40. Your favorite prompt from the 2015, 2016, or 2017 POPSUGAR Reading Challenges

2018 Popsugar Advanced Reading Challenge

1. A bestseller from the year you graduated high school - Lanark
√ 2. A cyberpunk book - Artificial Condition
3. A book that was being read by a stranger in a public place
√ 4. A book tied to your ancestry - The Sparrow
5. A book with a fruit or vegetable in the title
6. An allegory
√ 7. A book by an author with the same first or last name as you - Rapture
8. A microhistory – Word by Word
√ 9. A book about a problem facing society today - When They Call You A Terrorist
10. A book recommended by someone else taking the POPSUGAR Reading Challenge

Book Riot's Read Harder

√ 1. A book published posthumously – The Master and Margarita
2. A book of true crime –
√ 3. A classic of genre fiction (i.e. mystery, sci fi/fantasy, romance) - Tehanu
√ 4. A comic written and drawn by the same person - The Tea Dragon Society
√ 5. A book set in or about one of the five BRICS countries (Brazil, Russia, India, China, or South Africa) - The Hope Factory
√ 6. A book about nature – Rambunctious Garden
7. A western
√ 8. A comic written or illustrated by a person of color – The Prince and the Dressmaker
√ 9. A book of colonial or postcolonial literature - The God of Small Things
√ 10. A romance novel by or about a person of color – The Kiss Quotient
√ 11. A children’s classic published before 1980 – Pippi Longstocking
√ 12. A celebrity memoir - I Feel Bad about My Neck: And Other Thoughts on Being a Woman
√ 13. An Oprah Book Club selection – The Handmaid's Tale
√ 14. A book of social science – Why Civil Resistance Works: The Strategic Logic of Nonviolent Conflict
√ 15. A one-sitting book - Petra
16. The first book in a new-to-you YA or middle grade series
√ 17. A sci fi novel with a female protagonist by a female author - Trail of Lightning

Stats:

https://www.goodreads.com/user/year_in_books/2018/7530468

I think I read 85 works of fiction, 22 nonfiction. 32 male authors, 69 female authors. 23 people of color, 78 white people.

I'd like to read more nonfiction next year. I tend to start nonfiction, get interrupted by a book group or library due date, and then leave it hanging on my "currently reading" stack forever.

Small Beer Press is having a sale until Monday: http://smallbeerpress.com/shopping/remainders/#

Authors get full royalties. I bought

The River Bank Kij Johnson
The Chemical Wedding by Christian Rosencreutz John Crowley
The Winged Histories Sofia Samatar
Emma Tupper’s Diary Peter Dickinson
Horse of a Different Color Howard Waldrop
Spider in a Tree Susan Stinson

I also sent books to the nieces. Nixie went to their house for Thanksgiving, and told me Younger Niece is very interested in physics, so I sent her Randall Munroe's What If?, with a note that I hoped she would enjoy this book of applied science. I picked Max Gladstone's Three Parts Dead for Elder Niece. I hate having to wait until after Christmas to find out what they thought of them.

For Mungo's birthday I gave him

Algorithms to Live By: The Computer Science of Human Decisions, by Christian and Griffiths
Autonomous, by Annalee Newitz
The Complete Roderick, by John Sladek

Scorpio (October 23-November 21)

"Maybe happiness is this: not feeling like you should be elsewhere, doing something else, being someone else." This definition, articulated by author Isaac Asimov, will be an excellent fit for you between now and September 20. I suspect you'll be unusually likely to feel at peace with yourself and at home in the world. I don't mean to imply that every event will make you cheerful and calm. What I'm saying is that you will have an extraordinary capacity to make clear decisions based on accurate appraisals of what's best for you. (P.S.: Here's another tip from author Albert Camus: "If there is a sin against life, it consists perhaps not so much in despairing of life as in hoping for another life and in eluding the implacable grandeur of this life.")

*

I'm still prepping my house for the remodel, pulling everything out of the back half of the house and finding a place to put it in the front half. So, basically, I have to handle every thing I own and decide, Do I want to keep this? and If so, where am I going to keep it?

I am sure it is a salutary exercise, but I find that each of these things pulls me out of the now into regrets about the past, hopes/fears about the future, or just wishes for the present to differ from what it is. The longer it has been since I used the thing, the harder it pulls.

I did the books first; that was good. I don't feel sad about the fact that I won't have time to read or reread all of these books. I do regret each book I meant to review, and didn't. But having lots of books -- each one a potential box of delights -- does make me feel at peace with myself and at home in the world.

I just signed up for Audible. Is there anything from there that you would recommend? I read everything, but don't have a lot of experience listening to books. I do listen to podcasts. I care a lot about the enjoyability of the voice.

Tawanda book group has been going for 25 years. We don't actually discuss the book as much as we used to, but we have a book almost every month, and we get together to eat and talk. The host each month picks the book.

I feel like this book group doesn't really like my choices, but it also could be that I always want to discuss the book more than anyone else does. I try to pick short interesting books; I never pick SF any more; I do look at various "book group pick" lists. When I ask the other members to help me choose, they say, "You get to pick whatever you want! You are in control!"

I've got two ideas for my turn this year. I'd definitely pick The Mother Of All Questions except that I chose Solnit's Hope in the Dark last year. We do like talking about politics. We sometimes like to talk about death and grieving. One of our members just lost both her mother and her brother to the flu.

All book group all the time. I'm doing the Popsugar Reading Challenge and trying to fit my book groups' picks to their prompts. I expect that will get trickier later on in the year.

• What are you reading?

The Weird Sisters, by Eleanor Brown, for Tawanda book group, and Robinson Crusoe, by Daniel Defoe, for Classics book group.

• What did you recently finish reading?

The Best of All Possible Worlds, by Karen Lord, for science fiction book group. We've read fanfic with the serial numbers filed off before, and had similar problems appreciating it. Different reading protocols. Reading this as SF, I want to know what kind of time travel/parallel universes/communication at a distance/mindmelding with living spaceships we're dealing with, and how these things interact with each other to produce the effects we see. Reading it as fanfiction, I would be content to say "a solution exists", and pay attention to the problem this work deems most important, which is how Spock finds true love and happily ever after after his world is destroyed.

This book belongs on the Eugenics in SF reading list, Breeding for Psi Powers subheading.

• What do you think you’ll read next?

I've got Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close, by Jonathan Safran Foer, to read for library book group.