Friday, April 29, 2016

Power Picks!

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My nephew and I are working our way through all the Power Ranger shows on netflix, and sneaking in an extra episode of Power Rangers: Wild Force on Thursday made me late for the library. A few days ago we finished the season of Power Rangers: Time Force so we were feeling rather pumped and wanted to get a good start on the new season. I liked Time Force because although they had to have a boy for the Red Ranger position (very essentialist, these Power Rangers) it was clear that the Pink Ranger was the boss. I still think the love interest plot was squicky, but my nephew assures me that it was romantic, and anyone, the heart loves as the heart loves. Even if it's the guy who looks just like your recently dead fiance and is actually his 1000-year ancestor.

Anyway, this meant I didn't have time to browse the shelves, but the hold shelf had a full load so perhaps it's just as well!

My loot from the hold shelf:
AuroraLemonade MouthTwin SpicaShades of Milk and Honey

Aurora, Kim Stanley Robinson. This is the May pick for the online book club/podcast Sword and Laser. Their theme was SPACE!

Lemonade Mouth, Mark Peter Hughes. I started this earlier but the library called it home. Trying again. Re-loot for the win!

Twin Spica 8, Kou Yaginuma.  Continuing my trip with these hopeful astronauts in training. I think there are 12, so I still have a ways to go.

Shades of Milk and Honey, Mary Robinette Kowal. My other online book club/ video show is reading this as their alt pick for April. I still haven't found the main pick; I may have to buy it.

I also knew they had the copy of my next elementary school book club pick, so I grabbed it from the shelves:

The One and Only Ivan

The One and Only Ivan, Katherine Applegate. I've listened to this on audio but this is the first time with pages for me. I remember crying over it, which was an issue as I was driving at the time. I had to pause the story for a few minutes to get a hold of myself, which aggravated the listening passengers. Safety First, people!

And I should probably mention the ebooks which have dropped into my tablet:

William Shakespeare's Star WarsThe City's Son

Verily: A New Hope, Ian Doescher. The Star Wars/Shakespeare mash-up that my Tuesday night book/movie club is reading next Tuesday. Because it's Shakespeare week or death day or birthday or something, right? I've read it before, and I think my kid owns a copy, but I'm not sure where he put it.
I've currently got things out from the library.  I'd like to keep that number under thirty; it includes the stockpiled Cybils and Library Quest books, as well as a handful for the rest of the family. Also, I haven't really mastered returning e-books early, especially ones I read on my tablet in Kindle format. So I can ignore one or two of those numbers.

City's Son, Tom Pollock. The book we'll read after the Doescher. I know nothing about it.

That's a total of 29 things out, which isn't too bad. I'll go look at the Library Loot which is at Silly Little Mischief this week to see what everyone else is getting.  Library Loot is a weekly event co-hosted by Claire from The Captive Reader and Linda from Silly Little Mischief that encourages bloggers to share the books they’ve checked out from the library. If you’d like to participate, just write up your post - feel free to steal the button (that pile of books up at the top) - and link it using the Mr. Linky any time during the week. 


Library Questing

Here I document any progress I make in my Quest to read a book from every shelf in my local library.

Unnatural Causes by P.D. James is the current audio. It's only 8 discs and I'm on #4. This is a terrible vacation for Dagliesh -- the worst of police work and no authority to make it fun.

I'm still reading Sisterland by Curtis Sittenfeld, but I'm not really enjoying it and don't really care what happens to the characters. So after pushing ahead a few pages I let myself skip onto Anne Tyler's A Spool of Blue Thread which I'm enjoying more. Or I was until the icky part with the guy finding out that his high school girl friend (already scandalously young) is actually just starting middle school. Oops.

Monday, April 25, 2016

Heat Wave

It's Monday! What Are You Reading?
Wow, it got hot this week! Apparently it's the first time in April we've had three 80+ (Fahrenheit) days, or maybe three days in a row, or something. Somehow we hit a record. Enough that I noticed that I don't really have any shorts that fit, which will be a bigger problem on my cruise this summer. I guess I have to go shopping. But then it started raining, so no rush on that looming chore.
First world problem, huh? Whine, whine, I have to go shopping before my vacation in the Caribbean.

On Thursday I went down to the Blood Center at the mall to donate, and was switched to platelets despite my delicious O- blood type, and then failed the iron check anyway. Mental note -- take my vitamins! I'll try again in a week or so. And on the weekend I participated in the April Dewey 24 Hour Readathon, which helped me finish up some books, although I got a chance to celebrate my youngest son's birthday before he went off to his dads house, so I was forced to take a few breaks. But it meant that I read a fair handful of books this week. I like Readathons; they are a chance to barricade myself inside a tower of books yet still feel like I'm being social and hanging out with people. Thank goodness for the internet.

The Book Date is collecting the roundups of what everyone is reading and talking about this week. I'll also look in with Teach Mentor Texts which does the same thing for kidlit, since I read a pile of that as well.

This week I finished nine books:

Tell the Wind and FireArchangel's Enigma (Guild Hunter, #8)Child of the Ghosts (Ghosts, #1)The Fifth Season (The Broken Earth, #1)The Six (The Six #1)Devoted in Death (In Death, #41)Anna of ByzantiumDead Man Walking: The Eyewitness Account of the Death Penalty That Sparked a National DebateTwin Spica vol. 07 (Twin Spica, # 7)


Tell the Wind and Fire, Sarah Rees Brennan. YA. Wow, she really pulled off the Tale of Two Cities retelling! At first I wasn't convinced by the main characters; Ethan especially seemed kind of shallow, but then the layers started coming off and their true motivations made everything make sense and mean twice as much. My son's main complaint was that it wasn't a trilogy -- he wants to see what happens in this world. I won an ARC for this, but lent it out for teens for prereading so it's already been released. Highly recommended.

Archangel's Enigma, Nalini Singh. This one was very silly, but in a fun way. The evil stuff (torture, body horror) is a bit dark for me, but the crazy creatures, sexual tension, and plotty mcplotface action keep me smiling.

Child of the Ghosts
, Jonathan Moeller. After a significant amount of death and trauma, our heroes save the day! This is a story of a wounded child growing into a killer assassin, facing off against a necromancer with hundreds of years of experience and a plan to rule the known world. I don't think I'll seek out the next book in the series, but if I had to read the sequel for some reason I wouldn't complain.

The Fifth Season, N.K. Jemison. This is one of the Sword and Laser picks for this month (they had a vote, which had a tie). Wow, this is awesome, and I'm a very clueless reader. Just sayin'. This if my favorite book of the year so far. (finished during Readathon)

* The Six, Mark Alpert. A Cybils YA SF finalist. I decided this one would work for my "Boy Book" slot on my book bingo card. Fun, but things seemed to be mostly on the surface. (finished during Readathon)

* Devoted in Death, J.D. Robb. I read these in paperback, so I'm always a year behind. The bad guys were icky, but we didn't spend much time in their heads, and the victims we hung out with got rescued (that's pretty standard, actually). There wasn't much going on in the supporting cast (Truepenny got his detective badge) but Eve and Dallas got to spend time on their marriage. (finished during Readathon)

Anna of Byzantium, Tracy Barrett. I've had a bookmark in here for years, but I don't think I've touched it since the last readathon. I want to think Anna was actually cleverer and more ruthless -- in making her sympathetic they necessarily had to make her kinda stupid. But it gives a good sense of the morals and customs of this time period. (finished during Readathon)

Dead Man Walking, Sister Helen Prejean. I kept thinking I'd read this thoughtful book doing quiet moments before bed, when I could concentrate. But I never did. So I finally just picked it up. I appreciated how she learned from her naivety from her first meeting with a prisoner condemned to death, and what she did differently the next time. I thought she tried hard to represent the opinions of those who disagreed with her, but I was already mostly convinced before I picked the book up that the death penalty, particularly how it is practiced in the US, is awful, pointless, and cruel. (finished during Readathon)

* Twin Spica 7, Kou Yaginuma. Lots of stuff happened in this installment -- we find out about the rich girl's secret, all three girls bond over a training exercise, and the orphanage comes back up again. (read completely during Readathon)

* Books I started this week. Most books tend last for weeks on my lists, because I have this habit of reading dozens of things at once. But occasionally I keep focus for several days on end.

I started and am still reading more books:
Havoc (Dred Chronicles, #2)Harriet the Invincible (Hamster Princess, #1)Bone GapThe Flowers of Adonis
Havoc, by Ann Aguirre. This has been on my currently-reading list for months, but I only made it a few pages in so I just started over when I picked it up.  Set in the same universe (but I think a few centuries later?) as the Jax stories, it stars more damaged and overpowered people dealing with a horrific environment. I like the way we also switch back to get POVs from the mercenaries hired to kill them all.

Harriet the Invincible, Ursula Vernon. I talked the men in my Tuesday night movie/book club into reading this. So I deliberately put it down to finish on Tuesday. Also, I think I've got the youngest nibling interested, so we are share-reading it. I need to think of a movie to pair it with...

Bone Gap, Laura Ruby. The next Cybils finalist on my list.

The Flowers of Adonis, Rosemary Sutcliff. I'm reading this on my Kindle app as I have somehow acquired it. So much of my mental ancient Greece was set by Sutcliff; it will be interesting to see if she holds up to my aged self.

To distract myself and keep my hands off all the lovely books at the library, I sat and read a few picture books while waiting for my son's bus to arrive from the city:
Help! We Need a Title!June 29, 1999Something ExtraordinaryMarilyn's MonsterFrankencrayonThe Princess Knight

Help! We Need a Title, Hervet Tullet. This didn't quite work for me, although some of the pages would be fun (BOO!).

June 29, 1999, David Wiesner. I loved this depiction of a science project and data analysis.

Something Extraordinary, Ben Clampton. Cute but I don't see it grabbing my kids.

Marilyn's Monster, Michelle Knudson. I loved the conceit and the execution and the pictures.

Frankencrayon, Michael Hall. A great meta-book with several twists, a few of which my teenaged son did not predict when I forced him to read it. Recommended for kids with a sense of humor.

The Princess Knight, Cornelia Funke. A solid entry in the Paper-Bag Princess genre.

Bookmarks moved in several books. This seems like a more manageable set to me:
Under a Graveyard Sky (Black Tide Rising, #1)CruxBlake: or; The Huts of AmericaSisterlandUnnatural Causes (Adam Dalgliesh, #3)A Spool of Blue Thread

Under a Graveyard Sky, John Ringo.  Our heroes work to clear the cruise ship. We are taking notes since we will be on a cruise ship this summer.

Crux, Ramez Naam. I think the good guy just got captured by some of the bad guys.

Blake, or the Huts of America, Martin Delaney. This is the first book on Nisi Shawl's Crash Course in the History of Black Science Fiction. Our hero wander about the slave lands, laying the groundwork for his master scheme.

Sisterland, Curtis Sittenfeld. My next Reading My Library pick. Not my cup of tea, really. Our hero is an idiot. This makes it hard for me to sympathize with her.

Unnatural Causes, P.D. James. My next audio book for my Reading My Library Quest. I've read this before, but decades ago. Wow, homosexuality was strange back then.

A Spool of Blue Thread, Anne Tyler. I started my next Reading My Library Quest book because I wasn't enjoying Sisterland. Tyler I can trust to entertain me.

The next few books I'm not really reading, just dipping into between the books I'm trying to finish so that I can pretend that I'm going to read the books on my bookcases.


A Traitor to Memory (Inspector Lynley, #11)Midnight Crossroad (Midnigh...The Emerald Atlas (The Books of Beginning, #1)KenilworthReading and Learning to Read

A Traitor To Memory, Elizabeth George.
Awakening to the Sacred, Lama Surya Das. Prayer for every occasion and petitioner.
Midnight Crossroad, Charlaine Harris.
Emerald Atlas, John Stephens.
Kenilworth, Walter Scott. Our hero acquires a henchman.
Reading and Learning To Read, Jo Vacca.

2016 Challenge Progress:
  1. Cybils 2015:  21 out of 82. Knocked off another YA Fantasy.
  2. Reading My Library:  Reading Sisterland. Not enjoying it. Also reading A Spool of Blue Thread, which I am enjoying. Started disc 4 of 8 of Unnatural Causes.
  3. Where Am I Reading?: 21/50.  A Spool of Blue Thread is set in Maryland.  The Six mostly happens in Colorado -- woot!
  4. Full House Challenge: 21/25.   I set up the card again.
  5. Library Challenge: I'm at 74. I do love me a good public library.
  6. Diversity Challenge 2016: Kidlit: 10/12. No change. Adult lit: 7/12. I count The Fifth Season for the biracial protagonist spot, but it seems odd to use mixed race on a non-Earth planet.  Tracking sexuality this month; so far I read mostly books about straight people ( straight,  bisexual). It's not quite that bad -- there are many supporting characters on the rainbow, but I don't count them. 18 Straight, 1 LGBTQ. If the authors mention a spouse or partner on their web page, I guess their orientation:  straight,  gay/lesbian but I don't see how I'll recognize anything else. 3 Straight, 3 LG. 
  7. Shelf Love Challenge 2016:  14! Half of my Readathon reading was deliberately from my shelves.
  8. Grown-Up Reading Challenge 2016: 16/20. No change.
  9. Eclectic Reader Challenge 2016: 8/12. I'm going to have to seek the rest out, I think.
  10. Surprise Me Challenge: My April book arrived from the library: The Year of Living Dangerously. Now I just have to read it.
  11. Flash Bingo: Six Bingos!
  12. Literary Exploration Challenge: 10/12. I'm stuck on horror and classics. I'm not sure I'll recognize horror -- how gross is something before it counts?

Saturday, April 23, 2016

24 Hour Read-A-Thon Begins Again!

readathonbuttonIt's time for another 24 Hour Readathon! I link up with the Dewey 24 Hour Readathon, which is held twice a year. This is the Spring one, and it's a chance for me to clear off some of the 20-odd books I'm currently maintaining bookmarks in. So I hope to get a lot of titles, but it's really not that impressive.

It starts for me at 5:00 AM, April 23rd. Who knows if I'll be awake then, but this blog will start! I'll track books read, time read, and maybe do some challenges. There will be stuff happening at the home blog, as well as things going on at the Goodreads group around the readathon: Dewey's 24 Hour Read-a-Thon.

I already know I'll miss some hours because I'll be at a birthday dinner for my son. Priorities people!

Books I Opened:
  • The Fifth Season
  • Sisterland
  • Kenilworth
  • Devoted in Death
  • The Six
  • Anna of Byzantium
  • Dead Man Walking
  • Unnatural Causes (audio)
  • Twin Spica 7
  • Havoc
  • A Spool of Blue Thread
Books I Finished:
  1. The Fifth Season, N.K. Jemison, 4/23/16
  2. Devoted in Death, J.D. Robb 4/23/16
  3. Dead Man Walking, Sister Helen Prejean 4/23/16
  4. Anna of Byzantium, Tracy Barrett 4/23/16
  5. Twin Spica 7, Kou Yaginuma 4/23/16
  6. The Six, Mark Alpert 4/24/16
Time Count:

Hour 1: 5:00 AM (PST)   Zzzzzzzzzz

Hour 2: 6:00 AM (PST)   Zzzzzzzzzz

Hour 3: 7:00 AM (PST)    Zzzzzzzzzz

Hour 4: 8:00 AM (PST) Finally woke up! Perhaps staying up reading until late last night was not the best start.... Now reading.

Hour 5: 9:00 AM (PST) Read for an hour. Finished The Fifth Season. Poked at Sisterland and Kenilworth. Figured out I put the wrong Lemonade Mouth on my tablet. oops.
60 minutes

Hour 6: 10:00 AM (PST) Settled into Devoted in Death.
2 Hours

Hour 7: 11:00 AM (PST) Finished Devoted in Death.
3 hours.

Hour 8: 12:00 NOON (PST) Dabbled in three different books. Ate breakfast. Cat spilled my water glass.
4 Hours.

Hour 9: 1:00 PM (PST)  Decided to power through Dead Man Walking. Had to pick up the kids from bus stop. Audio book: Unnatural Causes.
5 hours

Hour 10: 2:00 PM (PST) Had to drop the kids off somewhere. Audio book again. Then back to Dead Man Walking.
6 Hours.

Hour 11: 3:00 PM (PST) Dead Man Walking is a slow read because Sister Helen Prejean seems to demand reflection of her readers. There's a lot to think about.
7 Hours.

Hour 12: 4:00 PM (PST) Have spent the last hour on the couch, eating popcorn and finishing Dead Man Walking.
8 Hours.

Hour 13: 5:00 PM (PST) I took a 40 minutes nap. Hoping to finish a mini-challenge on time with Anna of Byzantium
8 hours, 20 minutes

Hour 14: 6:00 PM (PST) I read up until the last minute, then headed out for my youngest's birthday dinner. Some things are even more important than the readathon :-) Grabbed Twin Spica 7 to read if we had a wait at the restaurant.
9 hours 20 minutes.

Hour 15: 7:00 PM (PST) Mostly spent celebrating.

Hour 16: 8:00 PM (PST) Celebrating and driving around.
10 hours 50 minutes.

Hour 17: 9:00 PM (PST) (Hosting on Goodreads) Did I mention that I finished Anna of Byzantium? 'Cause I did. Come see me on Goodreads!
11 hours 50 minutes.

Hour 18: 10:00 PM (PST) (Hosting on Goodreads) Reading and cheering. I think I've sent more tweets today then in my entire previous life. Also still on Goodreads!
12 hours 50 minutes

Hour 19: 11:00 PM (PST) Still reading Havoc, with occasional breaks to push along the bookmark in The Six.
13 hours 50 minutes

Hour 20: 12:00 MIDNIGHT (PST) Still going. Paused on Havoc to see if I can push to the end of The Six.
14 hours 50 minutes.

Hour 21: 1:00 AM (PST) Still reading, although I find myself rereading the same paragraph a lot. Finished The Six and going back to The Havoc, although I might put some time in on A Spool of Blue Thread as the large print will be easy to read.
15 hours 50 minutes.

Hour 22: 2:00 AM (PST) Still plugging on, although brain power is low. I remembered to clean the cat box, so that was five minutes lost.
16 hours 45 minutes

Hour 23: 3:00 AM (PST) Very tired, but still reading. Alternating between the SF book for the action and the large print book for the ease of reading.
17 hours 45 minutes

Hour 24: 4:00 AM (PST) I have propped my eyeballs open and intend to finish this thing! Probably won't finish any more actual books, but I'll make progress. My currently-reading stack now fits on one page (!7).
18 hours 45 minutes

Final Survey:

  1. Most Daunting hour: The first one. I always mean to wake up but the snooze button lures me in. Usually I dream that I'm reading something so that I don't feel guilty as I fall back asleep.
  2. High Interest Books: This is very reader dependent. For SF lovers, I recommend N.K. Jemison. I wish I had stocked up on more graphic novels since they make your eyes move in a different way.
  3. Improvements: I didn't really understand the teams. I was Team Sparrow, but I wasn't sure what I was supposed to do with my team.
  4. What worked? I liked moving between the blog, the goodreads group, and my twitter feed.There was a nice variety of challenges so I could do the ones that appealed to me but not feel bad about skipping some.
  5. How many? Um. I finished six, moved bookmarks in eleven, but most of the ones I finished I had started earlier. I like using the readathon to clean up my currently-reading pile.
  6. Titles? See top of blog.
  7. Favorite book? The Fifth Season
  8. Least favorite: Anna of Byzantium. I dislike when historical women are made stupid so they don't look mean. I bet the real Anna was much crueler but not as silly.
  9. Do it again? Yes -- I like an excuse to drop everything and read. I'll probably volunteer to run some discussions again. 

FINISH LINE: I made it! And boy are my eyes tired. I didn't finish anything else, but both Havoc and A Spool of Blue Thread are in good shape to finish next week.

19 hours, 45 minutes!

Friday, April 22, 2016

Friday Temptations

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Last week I ran into the library on Wednesday to pick up some movies for this week's Tuesday Book Club (the one where we watch a movie that we associate with the current book). I needed two copies of Mr Holmes so I could give one to my brother. Movies are only good for a week, so I dropped by my back-up library this Wednesday to return my copy (I managed to renew the one I gave my brother).

I'm full of shiny resolutions about not letting my library pile stack up on me. I have lot of book club books, I'm doing a Library Quest, I'm reading a Cybils book every week or so, so I don't really have a lot of extra reading time. Nevertheless I saw two books I really want to read, so I grabbed them in case my library wasn't going to tempt me on Thursday:

H Is for HawkMissoula

H Is For Hawk, Helen Macdonald. This has been recommended by everyone from the Economist magazine to my old friend and bigwig blogger Kristen from BookNAround.

Missoula, Jon Krakauer. Most of the time Krakauer's nonfiction prose interests and informs me, and with my kids and niblings poised to head for college it's a very timely read.

My loot from the hold shelf at my main library was two books for my son:

An Inheritance of AshesThe Sword of Summer

An Inheritance of Ashes, Leah Bobet. I read this on my tablet, but in KINDLE form so I couldn't share it with him, so I'll get him the paper version.

A Sword in Summer, Rick Riordan. I think this is the Norse Riordan.

I've currently got 27 things out from the library.  I'd like to keep that number under thirty; it includes the stockpiled Cybils and Library Quest books, as well as a handful for the rest of the family. Also, I haven't really mastered returning e-books early, especially ones I read on my tablet in Kindle format. So I can ignore one or two of those numbers.

I'll go look at the Library Loot which is at The Captive Reader this week to see what everyone else is getting.  Library Loot is a weekly event co-hosted by Claire from The Captive Reader and Linda from Silly Little Mischief that encourages bloggers to share the books they’ve checked out from the library. If you’d like to participate, just write up your post - feel free to steal the button (that pile of books up at the top) - and link it using the Mr. Linky any time during the week. 


Library Questing

Here I document any progress I make in my Quest to read a book from every shelf in my local library.

Unnatural Causes by P.D. James is the current audio. It's only 8 discs and I'm on #2. There's a dead body, and a roomful of suspects.

I'm still reading Sisterland by Curtis Sittenfeld, but I'm not really enjoying it and don't really care what happens to the characters. So after pushing ahead a few pages I let myself skip onto Anne Tyler's A Spool of Blue Thread which I'm enjoying more. Also this seems to be set in Maryland!

Monday, April 18, 2016

Fun with Kids

It's Monday! What Are You Reading?
There's something lovely about lazy holidays with family.

Last week was my boys' spring break, and we ended up with plenty of lovely weather. We caught up on Agents of Shield, made it to the Seattle Art Museum, and even snuck in a few minutes of driving practice instead of forcing the oldest to look at colleges. Then he headed out to win fame and glory at his Latin convention, so that's enough planning for the future. When I picked him up he was standing next to a boy holding a shield, so I shouted at him "Where's your shield? I told you to come home either with it or on it!" which made me happy even if I was referencing the wrong ancient culture.

The Book Date is collecting the roundups of what everyone is reading and talking about this week. I'll also look in with Teach Mentor Texts which does the same thing for kidlit, which I read four books this week. Five if you count Hild, which you may.

This week I finished six books:

Soldier's Secret: The Story of Deborah SampsonThe Secret Soldier: The Story of Deborah SampsonSymphony for the City of the Dead: Dmitri Shostakovich and the Siege of LeningradThe Beekeeper's Apprentice (Mary Russell, #1)An Inheritance of Ashes


Hild, 
Nicola Griffith. I made it to the end of this wonderful audio, which I read as part of my Reading My Library Quest.

* Soldier's Secret, Sheila Solomon Klass. I checked this out meaning to check out The Secret Soldier, which was my book club's actual book. It's about the same soldier, Deborah Sampson, who dressed as a man and joined the American Army during the War for Independence. This one is aimed a little older, and includes an imaginary romance with a doomed soldier as well as a smitten Tory starlet.

* The Secret Soldier, Ann McGovern. My actual elementary school book club pick. This is a short history of Deborah Sampson, soldier at the end of the Revolutionary War. The author tried to stick as close to known facts as possible, although she narrates the story to make it more accessible to children. The kids liked it, but most hadn't read it recently (I think it was a class book the year before).

Symphony for the City of the Dead, M.T. Anderson. The last Cybils YA Nonfiction book. After taking a few chapters to catch my interest (I thought I had finally found a dud in the bunch!) I ended up being riveted by the story of Russia under Communist rule, staggering under the assaults of Stalin before reeling from Hitler's attack. I knew nothing about the composer Shostakovitch before reading this book, but Anderson made both his life and his music come alive to me. I tried to interest the boys in this, but they ignored me.

Beekeeper's Apprentice, Laurie R. King. I'm reading for tomorrow's movie, having finished the book. I still don't see the point of the traumatic deception, since they can't sustain it when it matters.

* Inheritance of Ashes, Leah Bobet. Now I'm reading my way through the YA Cybils finalists, which I hope my son will read alongside me. It took me a while to warm up to this protagonist, but Bobet hooked me before the end.

* Books I started this week. Most books tend last for weeks on my lists, because I have this habit of reading dozens of things at once. But occasionally I keep focus for several days on end.

I started and am still reading two more books:
Unnatural Causes (Adam Dalgliesh, #3)A Spool of Blue Thread

Unnatural Causes, P.D. James. My next audio book for my Reading My Library Quest. I've read this before, but decades ago.

A Spool of Blue Thread, Anne Tyler. I started my next Reading My Library Quest book because I wasn't enjoying Sisterland. Tyler I can trust to entertain me.

Bookmarks moved in several books. This list is getting a bit out of hand, but the Dewey 24 Hour Readathon is next Saturday, and I hope that helps here:
Under a Graveyard Sky (Black Tide Rising, #1)CruxChild of the Ghosts (Ghosts, #1)Blake: or; The Huts of AmericaArchangel's Enigma (Guild Hunter, #8)SisterlandTell the Wind and FireThe Fifth Season (The Broken Earth, #1)Lemonade Mouth

Under a Graveyard Sky, John Ringo. A lot of discussion about how amazing Faith is, as we saw in last week's segment.

Crux, Ramez Naam. I need to read faster to keep up with all the characters.

Child of the Ghosts, Jonathan Moeller. More secondary characters are disposed of, and I think umbrellas are key survival tools in the big city.

Blake, or the Huts of America, Martin Delaney. This is the first book on Nisi Shawl's Crash Course in the History of Black Science Fiction.

Archangel's Enigma, Nalini Singh. Alexander's lair wasn't as hard to find as he thought.

Sisterland, Curtis Sittenfeld. My next Reading My Library pick. Not my cup of tea, really. Daisy/Kate operates her life from long distance, not really seeming connected to any of her family.

Tell the Wind and Fire, Sarah Rees Brennan. The real boy is missing and the doppleganger smirks about it.

The Fifth Season, N.K. Jemison. This is one of the Sword and Laser picks for this month (they had a vote, which had a tie). So far there are three strands, each of them powerful. Even the one in second person is gripping me, which is amazing. The plot raises interesting questions about power and control in societies.

Lemonade Mouth, Mark Peter Hughes. I got this back from the library and found my place again, which is right as they begin preparing for the Big Stunt.

The next few books I'm not really reading, just dipping into between the books I'm trying to finish so that I can pretend that I'm going to read the books on my bookcases.


A Traitor to Memory (Inspector Lynley, #11)Midnight Crossroad (Midnigh...The Emerald Atlas (The Books of Beginning, #1)KenilworthReading and Learning to Read

A Traitor To Memory, Elizabeth George. The police has lives of hidden complexity.
Awakening to the Sacred, Lama Surya Das. Fasting for fun and serenity.
Midnight Crossroad, Charlaine Harris. The town rallies to rescue their kidnapped friend.
Emerald Atlas, John Stephens. The dwarves have the older kids (to the delight of the brother) and the youngest has been poisoned. Things look grim for our Heroes.
Kenilworth, Walter Scott. Our hero meets an annoying boy who helps him with his horse.
Reading and Learning To Read, Jo Vacca. Questions to ask young readers to help them gain and control their comprehension.

2016 Challenge Progress:
  1. Cybils 2015: 20 out of 82. I finished YA nonfiction as well as the first (well, third) YA fantasy.
  2. Reading My Library:  Reading Sisterland. Not enjoying it. Also reading A Spool of Blue Thread, which I am enjoying. Finished listening to Hild, started disc 1 of 8 of Unnatural Causes.
  3. Where Am I Reading?: 20/50.  Nothing new.
  4. Full House Challenge: 25/25. DONE!  I set up the card again.
  5. Library Challenge: I'm at 69. I do love me a good public library.
  6. Diversity Challenge 2016: Kidlit: 10/12. No change. Adult lit: 6/12. No change.  Tracking sexuality this month; so far I read mostly books about straight people (9 straight, 1 bisexual). If the authors mention a spouse or partner on their web page, I guess their orientation: 3 straight, 1 gay/lesbian.
  7. Shelf Love Challenge 2016:  11! 
  8. Grown-Up Reading Challenge 2016: 16/20. No change.
  9. Eclectic Reader Challenge 2016: 8/12. YA is good for the apocalypse spot.
  10. Surprise Me Challenge: My April book arrived from the library: The Year of Living Dangerously. Now I just have to read it.
  11. Flash Bingo: Got an L. Two bingos!
  12. Literary Exploration Challenge: 10/12. I'm zooming through these. On the higher level, I'm at  15/36.