Flashback to 2020, late July - sci-fi and romance (spoilers!)

(discussion of fictional violence, & spoilers)

Friday, July 24, 2020
Hmm, I haven't actually read much in the last day or two. I was kind of looking at some things I might want to read in the future, some recommendations and such... For one thing, I have one of the Murderbot books, I think, and that seems like something I'd like. (I say "book" but I think maybe they're novellas?) I also saw some recommendations from the Expanse guys about "spaceship" SF, which might be interesting!

Sunday
I don't know that I have much to say. I finished the romance novel. (The one guy did commit suicide, the other guy did egg him on, but this is something that happened several years in the past, in the book, and the protagonists agree that there's not going to be a way to punish the egger-on, and they move on. A lot of Mary Balogh books seem to be about getting past the traumas that happened in your past.)

Meanwhile, I'm back to slogging through Cibola Burn. I'm to the part where there's a huge apocalyptic event on the other side of the planet Holden and Amos are on, and it seems for a while like everybody's absolutely going to die, but actually most of them don't, in the end. This book has now been done by the TV series, too. We watched one episode (of the 4th season, that is) and Rob seemed interested but we haven't come back to it. I guess I'll go finish it on my own, at some point. Rob and I tend to have difficulty coordinating on TV shows sometimes. Anyway, I will get through this book eventually. Possibly with another romance novel going in parallel!

Flashback: 2020, late July - still slogging through Cibola Burn

(always possibility of spoilers here!! - especially for later Expanse books, in this case)

Monday, July 24
I was thinking about two-author books. The only thing I know about how "Corey" works is that they started out with one of them writing Holden and the other writing Miller. That reminded me of the books that Patricia Wrede wrote with Caroline Stevener (which were literally an exchange of letters, in real life, as I understand it) - starting with Sorcery and Cecilia. Those are basically Regency with magic - the first one is an out-and-out romance, too (only with magic). I think I may need to re-read that.

(It occurs to me to wonder if the idea for Jonathan Strange and Mr Norrell came from that. Same combination of Regency and magic.)

Tuesday
I'm finishing up Cibola Burn, and the last time I read the epilogue I must've been totally skimming, because it lays down a foundation for the rest of the books in a way I didn't really take in before. (I can see missing it before I read the others, but that was a while ago now.) The gist: once Mars' population starts leaving for the gates in significant numbers, the Martian terraforming project will fail, so Mars as a civilization fails too. Nobody needs their natural resources when they can get them beyond the gates - and that means the immediately valuable thing left is their military might - leading to Marco and Laconia and all that.)

Friday
It's early and I can't sleep so I thought maybe writing would clear my brain a bit and help me sleep. I can't say I really have anything brilliant to say about books at the moment, though. I did read straight through Sorcery and Cecilia the other night. There are two more books in that series, but I don't think I have the second one any more, only the third. Which is a shame, because even if the third one is better than the second (which it is), I'd still like to re-read the whole series, not just 2/3 of it.