Sunday Status Update: February 2, 2020

Jana: This week I read Charlaine Harris’ second GUNNIE ROSE novel, A Longer Fall, and Sarah Gailey’s latest novella, Upright Women Wanted. Tadiana and I will be reviewing A Longer Fall together, and I should have a review for Upright Women Wanted put together quite soon. Next up for me is A.K. Larkwood’s The Unspoken Name, because “orc priestess who becomes a wizard’s assassin” sounds amazing to me, and I’m very ready for something different.

Bill: This week I read Remembrance by Rita Woods, a decent historical fantasy; The Dark Fantastic by Ebony Elizabeth Thomas, an interesting look at race in fantasy; Nils: The Tree of Life, a graphic fantasy that had great art but a weak story; and Hallow this Ground, a collection of essays by Colin Rafferty.  In audio I listened to a mostly good collection of brief semi-lyric science essays —  Eating the Sun: Small Musings on a Vast Universe by Ella Frances Sanders and finished the excellent The Butchering Art: Joseph Lister’s Quest to Transform The Grisly World of Victorian Medicine by Lindsey Fitzharris. In video, my family and I are mourning the end of The Good Place and have been laughing out loud quite a bit at HBO’s Avenue 5.

Kat: I’ve been so busy at work and have had little time to read. Plus I’ve been captivated by the impeachment hearings… anyway, after about 19 hours of Michelle West’s The Broken Crown, the first book in her SUN SWORD saga, I gave up. Review coming soon. Today I’ll be finishing up Charles Yu’s Interior Chinatown, a brilliant novel about the Asian-American experience.

Marion: I finished Battle Mage by Peter A. Flannery. It’s a fun fantasy adventure with scary evil guys, epic battles and awesome dragons. Otherwise, I’ve been browsing the most recent issue of Fantasy and Science Fiction.

Terry: Despite my resolution to read nothing new until I finished all the books I’d started in 2019, I’ve read nothing but new books this week. I finished The Lamb Will Slaughter the Lion by Margaret Killjoy, as predicted, and I’m still not sure whether I liked it. I also read The Other Wife by Michael Robotham, and I’ve started Six Months, Three Days, Five Others, a short story collection by the extraordinarily talented Charlie Jane Anders. And just this morning I started a reread, for the first time in many decades, of Little Women by Louisa May Alcott. Like most bookish girls, I always wanted to grow up to be Jo — and I think I kinda did.