Sunday Status Update: April 5, 2020

Jana: This week has been…well, you get the news, you know what it’s been like. Distracting, to say the least. I’m reading through Joseph Fink and Jeffrey Cranor’s latest WELCOME TO NIGHT VALE novel, The Faceless Old Woman Who Secretly Lives in Your Home; it’s delightful and dark and very, very tense, so I’ve been taking my time with this one rather than just devouring it all at once.

Kat: Like Jana said, the news is distracting. Plus, I’m working from home and my teenage daughter is also home from school, so that’s distracting, too… But I did get some reading done this week. Mary Toft; or The Rabbit Queen by Dexter Palmer is an odd novel that’s very different from his last novel, Version Control, which was my favorite book of 2016. Peasprout Chen: Battle of Champions, a Nebula finalist by Henry Lien, was just as entertaining as its predecessor. Catfishing on CatNet by Naomi Kritzer, another Nebula finalist, is delightful so far. I’m finishing it up today.

Marion: I finished K.D. Edwards’s second book in his THE TAROT SEQUENCE, The Hanged Man. Edwards opens up his New Atlantean world a bit with this one. I’m finishing up SIXTEENTH WATCH by Myke Cole, which is military space opera.

Sandy: Moi? I am currently reading my fifth book in a row from Armchair Fiction’s current Lost World/Lost Race series, this one being Richard Tooker’s Inland Deep. This work first appeared in shorter form in the March 1933 issue of Amazing Stories magazine and was later expanded to novel form – the version that I am reading – in 1936. I look forward to reporting back to you on this one shortly….

Terry: I finally got around to reading John Connolly’s Every Dead Thing, the first in his CHARLIE PARKER mystery series.  It’s only been on my shelf for 21 years, so I’m in good time! Parker — known as Bird, as any jazz aficionado would expect, is a far darker hero than I’m used to, and it makes him especially intriguing. Once I finished that, I dove into This Is How You Lose a Time War by Amal El-Mohtar and Max Gladstone, an epistolary novella  written in lyrical prose that I enjoyed very much indeed. I’m now reading Out of Body, a new novella by one of my favorites, Jeffrey Ford, coming out before long, and still working on I Like to Watch: Arguing My Way Through the TV Revolution by Emily Nussbaum for my daily recommended dose of nonfiction.