Ok the 83 year old chosen one sounds great please update with review. Fingers crossed.

I’ve been reading a lot of cozy/soothing fantasy and such. Highly recommend all books by Celia Lake (magic in the 1920s/1930s, but gentle characters and smart/good people, even if some of them are still reeling from WWI or something), and amusingly a book called “Beware of Chicken” by someone named “CasualFarmer” on Kindle. Also “Legends and Lattes” was cute, as were a couple others of that ilk whose names I can’t remember right now…

JZ, if you haven't read the Temeraire series, you must. And it will last you a while.

I’m listening to Patrick Rothfuss’s The Name of the Wind, which I also need have in paper back, and could swear I had read before. But apparently not.

Emmett is deeply into Rothfuss right now.

JZ, if you haven't read the Temeraire series, you must. And it will last you a while.

I have the first three books in house so she can snarfle those up.

I'm reading Excession by Iain M. Banks (do not forget the "M" or he turns into a dreaded literary author).

I picked this one because I love how he writes AI's particularly the ones in giant spaceships. They're all very sardonic and snarky. Anyway, this particular book is loaded with them, and I'm loving it. I had to go back and re-read the prologue then the back jacket copy to orient myself because he's introducing so many ideas so quickly that if you don't pay attention you get lost.

It's all laid out clearly but I had to go back a couple times. "Oh, she's been pregnant for forty years. Oh, she's not on an island on a planet, she's on an island, on a sea that's inside a space ship. Oh..."

JZ, I'm glad you liked it! Or appreciated it! Because I continue to be entirely realistic about my painting skills, but I did like the idea of leaving a tangible memory. (Am I right about your name, by the way? Greek is a... challenging language.)

I remembered liking the Temeraire novels but hadn't thought about Novik until Cory Doctorow (maybe?) recommended the Scholomance books. A magical school where most of the students are killed before graduation was an attention-grabbing idea.

Banks is on my mental list but intimidating. (It only took Bujold about twenty years to make it to the top of my list.)

I think I read a Banks novel and it didn't grab me and now I'm wondering if I read the right Banks. Possibly not! And this was probably 20 years ago. Or more.

I really like Bujold's Penric and Desdemona novellas, which are in the 5 gods world but earlier. Wait, maybe later than some of them. At a specific time that is not the same as the main run of the 5 gods.

I love pretty much everything by Bujold, but particularly "The Curse of Chalion" and the rest of the world of the five gods books. They're more fantasy than space opera.

Timelies all!

Currently reading A Murder in Carlton House by Ashley Gardner. Regency mystery series. Also meandering through Leverage fics, and fics bookmarked by a MCU fic writer.

Banks is on my mental list but intimidating.

FWIW, I find him very readable even though I do need to slow down and pay attention to what he's saying. But the action is fast paced and the characters are all well drawn and intriguing.

I love pretty much everything by Bujold, but particularly "The Curse of Chalion" and the rest of the world of the five gods books.

Definitely my faves.

I just finished a Murderbot re-reading, and I've been going through Elisabeth Ogilvie's Jennie Glenroy trilogy--I mentioned these on JZ's FB recently. They're historical novels set in early 19th century Scotland and Maine that I've never met anyone else who's even heard of. I own them in paperback, but now they're on Kindle too, which makes them so much handier to read.

In new-to-me books this year, so far my favorites have been Louise Erdrich's middle grade Birchbark House series of historical fiction, plus When the Angels Left the Old Country by Sacha Lamb.

On the Bujold front, I adore the Penric and Desdemona series and the Vorkosigan books, especially pretty much everything from Memory forward, but for some reason the Sharing Knife series books have been my go-to comfort reads since 2016. I can't even really explain why--it's just the world I most want to plunge into no matter how much I feel like I should be appalled by Fawn and Dag's age gap.