Familiar Diversions

No pictures in this update, and also no attempts to include any of Booklikes' links or linking images, because I don't think I could stand the frustration. Plus, I don't want to tempt the site to just time out. Booklikes is still working incredibly slowly for me.

Anyway, I finished How a Realist Hero Rebuilt the Kingdom, Vol. 1 (374 pages), so that gets me another $3.

Bank: $40

1st roll: 1 + 3 = 4 (Ascendance of a Bookworm, Part 1, Vol. 3, 428 pages, $5)

2nd roll: 4 + 3 = 7 (The Gamekeeper's Lady, 283 pages, $3

3rd roll: 5 + 6 = 11 (The Accidental Demon Slayer, 292 pages, $3)

4th roll: 1 + 4 = 5 (The Saga of Tanya the Evil, Vol. 1, 329 pages, $3)

5th roll: 2 + 4 = 6 (Heart Change by Robin D. Owens, 368 pages, $3)

6th roll: 5 + 1 = 6 (How a Realist Hero Rebuilt the Kingdom, Vol. 1, 374 pages, $3)

7th roll: 3 + 1 = 4

I was on spot 36. This gets me past GO (earn $5 automatically) and onto to Spot 3, School's Out for Summer. Requirements:

Read a book set in a school or a college, or that is considered a "classic" (any criteria you want), or that is frequently banned.

As much as I like Murderbot, I don't think the series has made its way onto any "classics" lists yet, so once again I can't choose Artificial Condition. I'm honestly not sure what books I own that would both work for this and fit my current mood. Most of the YA I own isn't contemporary-set and might not take place in a school. I could maybe reread M.C.A. Hogarth's Mindtouch, but I'm kind of in the mood for something new. I don't know, I'll have to think about it.

Lentil soup, made using this recipe.

I doubled the carrots, used green lentils because that's all I can find around here, used dried minced onions instead of fresh, and skipped the spinach. The only part I regretted was the carrots - I didn't realize the chopping motions would aggravate my elbow so much. But the soup is tasty and will provide me with several meals worth of leftovers.

In preparation for the next day I'm expected to be at the library (Wednesday), I got a little bolder about saying that I'm not comfortable doing 2-hour record editing sessions while sitting right next to my boss, especially while she opts not to wear a mask. Last I heard from her, she was very upset (angry? annoyed? not sure) but said she'd wear a mask next time. She'll have Monday and Tuesday to cool off, and then I see how things go on Wednesday. I predict she either won't speak to me at all (cold shoulder treatment is her thing) or she'll be extra vocal about how annoying the mask is but how she'll wear it because I'm so insistent. I hate feeling like the workplace nuisance, but if she actually does wear a mask it'll be worth it.

Edit: Aaand it looks like she opted for the cold shoulder response. Which is okay as long as it doesn't go longer than a couple days, because we do have a time sensitive issue I emailed her about on Friday that needs to be taken care of. ::sigh::

Booklikes is still working for me, but so slowly that I think I'm just going to do all my reading status updates over at GR for a while. That should hopefully lessen my irritation. I'll still post reviews and BLopoly updates here, though, as well as any non-book related things.

The premise is great, the execution much less so. A Japanese guy named Kazuya Souma is summoned to another world to be a hero. However, he's not really a demon-slaying kind of guy, and the summoning didn't specifically ask for someone who could slay the demon lord, so he decides that his heroism will involve improving the country's economy. He uses his new magical ability to get paperwork done at a faster rate, and he puts out a call for people with abilities that might be able to help the country.

I just finished the section in which he evaluated the five most gifted individuals, and I'm not all that impressed. Apparently the absolute most important person in the bunch is a guy named Poncho Panacotta, who went broke pursuing his desire to eat anything and everything that could possibly be eaten. In a country that is currently in the midst of a food shortage. The author just spent several pages emphasizing how wonderful it was that Souma recognized Poncho's importance, but readers still don't know why he'll turn out to be so vital. All I can think is that maybe he'll have knowledge of a particular source of food that most folks in the country don't know about. But I feel like this would work a lot better if Poncho were a talented chef rather than a self-admitted glutton.

Souma's a hard worker, sure, but he doesn't strike me as particularly amazing. Instead, it's more like this country was so badly managed that even Souma's basic knowledge about how things might be improved (selling all the things in the royal vault that have purely monetary value, gradually switching from growing cotton to growing more food crops, improving the health of the country's forests with periodic thinning, etc.) is seen as revolutionary.

It took me two tries to add this to my Currently Reading shelf. Booklikes kept timing out. If this keeps up, I may have to go on a Booklikes break. I just copied over the information I need in order to keep track of BLopoly even if I can't reach my own Booklikes blog.

Anyway, this is my pick for my latest BLopoly spot. The title has all the letters necessary to spell "Rome." We'll see how it goes. It's another J-Novel Club title, so I'm not expecting much. The main character seems a bit boring, and the story just sort of plops readers into whatever new world he's found himself in, without much warning or time to adjust. The main character was barely fazed by being transported to a new world and was looking over account books and world history within an hour of arriving.

Books read for the game so far:

Bank: $37

1st roll: 1 + 3 = 4 (Ascendance of a Bookworm, Part 1, Vol. 3, 428 pages, $5)

2nd roll: 4 + 3 = 7 (The Gamekeeper's Lady, 283 pages, $3

3rd roll: 5 + 6 = 11 (The Accidental Demon Slayer, 292 pages, $3)

4th roll: 1 + 4 = 5 (The Saga of Tanya the Evil, Vol. 1, 329 pages, $3)

5th roll: 2 + 4 = 6 (Heart Change by Robin D. Owens, 368 pages, $3)

6th roll: 5 + 1 = 6

I was on spot 30, so this puts me on spot 36, European Vacation - not quite far enough to pass Go and collect a little extra money. Darn. The requirements:

Read a book that involves travel to Europe, or that has an image of any European city or monument on the cover, or that the letters of the title can spell the name of any European city that I visited in my trip (Paris, Amsterdam, Munich, Geneva, Rome, Florence, Venice, and Barcelona).

Nice, that's broader than I thought when I first started reading the requirements. And OMG, it still won't let me read Martha Wells' Artificial Condition.

A lot of my Japanese light novels have long titles that almost certainly have all the letters necessary to spell at least one of these city names, so I may be going with one of those. Heart Change gave me enough of a break that I think I can handle it.

Geez, Booklikes is working slowly for me tonight. Anyway, I finished this, so that's another $3 for me.

I'd recommend this to fans of the series because of the progression in the Vinni and Avellana storyline, but the romance between Signet and Cratag was weak. The pieces were there, but they didn't fit quite right. Also, this felt like it could have been shorter.

As long as I don't think too hard about how fast the romance has progressed, I like it. Lonely heroine who thinks she's doomed to have everyone she loves leave her, hero who wants a place where he's needed and welcomed. But yeah, it really doesn't make sense that they've fallen all over each other so fast, even considering that they'd met a few times prior to this book. It only took maybe a day for the kissing and heated looks to start.

The non-romance storyline is nice because it ties in with an overarching series plotline that I'd thought Owens might save for the end of the series, although a quick Goodreads check indicates that it's going to take another 8 books for Vinni and Avellana to be old enough to star in their own book. I'm not sure how I feel about a romance novel starring characters that were first introduced in the series as children.

Actual frequent on-page dialogue! It's a breath of fresh air after The Saga of Tanya the Evil.

That said, I've just been smacked in the face by one of the problems with this series, its unintentional cheese factor. Noble families have sentient homes, with the AI housed in a place known as the HouseHeart (edit: I just realized that some of this info might be wrong, since the HouseHeart has a female voice but the public area has a male voice, huh). They're protected rooms, so there are special ways to open them. The Marigold family HouseHeart can be accessed by...tap dancing. This is taken utterly seriously. There are traditional shoes, stored in a special cubby.

It's apparently been on Prime for a little over a week now. I haven't been using my streaming services much lately and hadn't noticed. Anyway, I rewatched it, and it was just as enjoyable the second time around. I got to worry less about Marta and just pay attention to how all the pieces came together.

If you haven't seen it, I'd recommend it if you're into traditional mysteries. Two bits of warning: there's on-screen vomiting (the one during the Big Reveal is so gross I just shut my eyes during both my first and second viewing) and one scene in which a spider walks across a person's face.

I chose this for my "author whose first or last name begins with a letter in LOVE" book. I was going to read Heart Journey but was checking the series order, and of the two books I own in this series that I haven't yet read, this one came first. Although the romances in these are self-contained, they do tend to reference lots of events and characters in previous books, so I figured it would be better to read them more in order.

That said, I'm flat out skipping Book 7, Heart Fate, the one with the 23-year-old guy and 17-year-old girl who was married to an abusive man when she was only 14. That's just a no from me.

Heart Change has been in my collection long enough to develop some sun damage from my terrible book storage practices. I don't recall ever being all that invested in this book's main characters when they were side characters in other books, so I'm guessing this will end up on my offload pile when I'm done.

Books read for the game so far:

Bank: $34

1st roll: 1 + 3 = 4 (Ascendance of a Bookworm, Part 1, Vol. 3, 428 pages, $5)

2nd roll: 4 + 3 = 7 (The Gamekeeper's Lady, 283 pages, $3

3rd roll: 5 + 6 = 11 (The Accidental Demon Slayer, 292 pages, $3)

4th roll: 1 + 4 = 5 (The Saga of Tanya the Evil, Vol. 1, 329 pages, $3)

5th roll: 2 + 4 = 6 

I was on spot 25, so this puts me on spot 30, the Summer Romance.

Read a book with fruit or pastries on the cover or that was written by an author whose first or last name begins with any letter in LOVE.

Okay, this game is definitely messing with me. Once again, there's no way I can fit a Murderbot book into this.

It's quite possible that I have a book somewhere in my collection that fits the first requirement, but the second one is quicker and easier to work with, so I'll probably go with something that fits that.

I could do a reread (one of Fuyumi Ono's Twelve Kingdoms books) or something new. I'm leaning towards new. Some possibilities:

- Masquerade and the Nameless Women by Eiji Mikage

- The Best of All Possible Worlds by Karen Lord

- One of Lois McMaster Bujould's Vorkosigan books (I've read a couple and enjoyed them)

- Sword Dancer by Jeannie Lin

- Velocity Weapon by Megan E. O'Keefe

And that's just the stuff I can see in the closest bookcase, without moving anything around.

I'm finished! I don't own the next book in this series, but that's okay, because I also have no desire to read it.

The thing I'm most happy about: I get to roll again. Yay! This book earned me $3 in Booklikesopoly.