Sunday Status Update: July 4, 2021

Jana: This week has been (like most weeks lately) tremendously busy, so I’m still working my way through Helene Wecker’s The Hidden Palace. I’m liking it quite a lot, and I wish I could just sit down and read for more than 10-15 minutes at a time! My hope is to have a chance to finish it next week, along with some half-completed reviews that I really want to get posted. There just never seem to be enough hours in the day!

Bill: This week I read the best short story collection I’ve read in a number of years — The Rock Eaters by Brenda Peynado (rave review to come). I also continued my reread of the MALAZAN BOOK OF THE FALLEN by Steven Erickson, finishing books 4-6:  House of Chains, Midnight Tides,  and The Bonehunters. In video, we all loved the second season of Mythic Quest; my son and I have been enjoying Loki, mostly due to the characters/actors vs the storyline, which is solid enough; MODOK is often quite funny, though hit and miss and a little too frenetic/puerile for me; and I loved the first episode of Counterpart, though my son found it too slow.

Kat: I’m still reading the new Andre Norton audiobooks that Tantor has been releasing. This week was Judgment on Janus and Victory on Janus. I have a lot of Norton audiobooks still on my TBR pile. Happy Independence Day, my fellow Americans!

Marion: After reading a draft of a friend’s horror thriller, and now I’m back, enthralled, in Merlin Sheldrake’s Entangled Life. I’m just up to the chapter about lichen. They are amazing.

Sandy: Moi? I am currently reading an apocalyptic disaster novel entitled The Second Deluge, first released in 1912 and written by astronomer/novelist Garrett P. Serviss. This book is really terrific so far, concerning what happens to planet Earth when it passes through a nebula and torrential rains start to come down, to the point that the entire world is drowned. But one scientist has had the foresight to build an ark that will hold 1,000 people. This novel has really sucked me right in, and I hope to be able to share some thoughts with you about it very shortly….

Terry: I’m still reading The Curse of Chalion by Lois McMaster Bujold, and somewhat bemused to find that it doesn’t really get going until halfway through — but at that point it completely captured me, and I expect to finish it and start on the next in the trilogy, Paladin of Souls, this holiday weekend. I’m also reading The Guilty Dead by P.J. Tracy, one of the MONKEEWRENCH series, and finding it reliable fun.