Kat: S.B. Divya’s Machinehood was the best book I read this week. I look forward to telling you about it. I’m also reading four stand-alone novels by Andre Norton which were collected in the 2009 Baen omnibus The Game of Stars and Comets which has just been produced in audio format. So far I’ve finished The Sioux Spaceman and The Eye of the Monster. I’m currently reading the third novel, The X Factor. These aren’t great literature — they’re just short fun space operas, but I’m so glad to see Tantor Audio putting them out.
Bill: This week I read The Bone Maker by Sarah Beth Durst; a solid but somewhat disappointing and overly familiar fantasy; Life’s Edge: Searching for What It Means to be Alive by Carl Zimmer, an excellent exploration of the definition of and search for life; Hamnet, by Maggie O’Frarrell, a moving story of Shakespeare’s wife and youngest son; and Kingdom Animalia, a strong collection of poetry by Aracelis Girmay. In video I binged the 1 ½ seasons of Snowpiercer, which lacks compelling depth but is solid enough background TV (i.e. keep it on while I work) that I’ll finish season two. And I’m still quite enjoying Resident Alien, which now growing on my wife.
Marion: The second book in Juliette Wade’s series THE BROKEN TRUST, Transgressions of Power, opens up the world of Varin for the reader, and places characters we like in even more extreme jeopardy. (I hadn’t thought that was possible.) I didn’t want to put this book down. I finished it, though, so I’ve started on something completely different; Sarah Madsen’s Weaver’s Folly, a Southern cyberpunk fantasy. Yes, you read that right. Really enjoying her elf-who’s-a-thief main character, and her near-future Atlanta. Also teeth-gritting my way through another round of revisions.
Terry: I’m in the mood for some shorter works just lately, so I’ve read The Big Score by K.J. Parker and Later by Stephen King, and hope to have reviews of both of them done soon. I’m continuing the trend with The Swallowed Man by Edward Carey, which is about Geppetto’s adventures inside that whale, and What Abigail Did That Summer by Ben Aaronovitch, the latest in the RIVERS OF LONDON series. I like the latter much more than the former, but we’ll see if that holds true as I finish both of them this weekend.
Pull any Andre Norton book off the library shelf in my 4-6 elementary school and you’d see my name on the checkout card (look it up kids) multiple times. I must have taken out Star Guard or Star Rangers 8 or 9 times in my three years there. Zero Stone less often, but still more than once.
For me it was the Heinlein juveniles. I can still visualize exactly where they were in the library — a particular corner in the back. And, in another corner, I found The Three Investigators.
Funny how that works, the visualization: Norton books were walk in the door, take a left, crouch down in a little corner area. I hit the Heinlein juveniles, save for Rocket Ship Galileo–the only one my elementary library had, in 7th grade–low shelves right below the window, all of them lined up in a long row. The Danny Dunn books were primary school right to the left when you walked in and also low to the ground. The Three Investigators I borrowed from my best friend–they shelf next to his bed :)
It’s funny that I can easily visualize the libraries, but not many of the other rooms, in the schools I attended.