What have you read lately?

[ergative]

The Gauntlet and the Fist Beneath, by Ian Green. It's got a cool world built, but it depends so heavily on feeble flashbacks and snippets of 'documents' at the beginning of each chapter to provide historical context and character backstory that it couldn't support the story it wanted to tell. It felt like book 2 of a trilogy, requiring readers to draw on knowledge and character arcs set up in book 1 to truly appreciate it. Except there is no book 1, so everything felt under-explained and emotionally dead.

[ergative]

Just finished This is our Undoing, by Lorraine Wilson. I did not expect to enjoy it as much as I did. I avoid climate apocalypse fascist dystopias as much as I can, given that there's plenty of that developing outside the pages of my books, and the moody introspection that characterizes the whole text is usually something I have little patience with. Much of the action, such as it is, involves walking in the woods and talking to people or sitting in a lab looking at GPS blips and making Deep Moral Decisions, interrupted by periods of Waiting and Worrying. And yet, somehow, I was utterly engrossed. Part of it might be because I've spent all summer doing a huge amount of Waiting and Worrying (buying a new home, see Venting Thread), so I could deeply empathize with our main character's state of mind, but I think my enjoyment was less about my own circumstances and much more about Wilson's skill as a writer.

Also, the hard copy of the book is really beautiful: heavy, solid, slightly fuzzy matte cover, like a peach, smooth paper. I kept stroking it as I was reading because it was such a nice object. There was, unfortunately, a misprint that cut off the last couple of sentences of chapter 9, but I still really liked the physical experience of reading it.

[mamselle]

Oh, we should do a thread on misprints in books.

On my paperbacks, the editor in me just HAS to make little notations....can't stop myself....

M.

[ab_grp]

I got lucky with a misprint a while back.  There was a very important book in my field that I did not own that had gone out of print, so used copies were selling for hundreds and hundreds of dollars.  Someone decided to reprint it, so I ordered one (of course!).  I think the copies were about $65.  Not bad for a classic.  Well, they misprinted one page, so they printed all new copies and sent them back out for free, so now I have two copies.  Yay! I do tend to notice misprints in general, but that's the only one that's been a benefit.

[hmaria1609]

From the library:
Finished: A Secret Princess by Margaret Stohl and Melissa de la Cruz (YA)
A retelling of A Little Princess, The Secret Garden, and Little Lord Fauntleroy by Frances Hodson Burnett. The 3 main characters, Sara Crewe, Mary Lennox, and Cedric Errol are teens in this novel.

Next up: Blade Breaker by Victoria Aveyard (YA)
New and #2 in the "Realm Breaker" series

[ergative]

From the library:
Finished: A Secret Princess by Margaret Stohl and Melissa de la Cruz (YA)
A retelling of A Little Princess, The Secret Garden, and Little Lord Fauntleroy by Frances Hodson Burnett. The 3 main characters, Sara Crewe, Mary Lennox, and Cedric Errol are teens in this novel.

Goodness, and how was it?

[Parasaurolophus]

Dinomaniacs: Today, I discovered that C.M. Koseman curated a sequel to All Yesterdays in 2013, and it's available as a free eBook!

All Yesterdays was too short, so this is just great!

[hmaria1609]

Goodness, and how was it?

I enjoyed it! The authors included story threads and descriptions from the original three novels. Some of the secondary characters in those novels meet the main leads as well. Some things were changed for this novel but it was a good read.  I'd read the original novels at one time or another.
At the end, Jo March from Jo & Laurie appears.

[Parasaurolophus]

Do you guys remember a children's SciFi story (a short novel, I think) in which the protagonist is forced to play human chess with an evil entity (a queen?), and in which captured pieces are executed? IIRC, the kid beats her with a fool's mate (or maybe scholar's mate).

[mamselle]

The first part sounds like "Alice in Wonderland"...

But not the last bits...

M.

[onthefringe]

Do you guys remember a children's SciFi story (a short novel, I think) in which the protagonist is forced to play human chess with an evil entity (a queen?), and in which captured pieces are executed? IIRC, the kid beats her with a fool's mate (or maybe scholar's mate).

Sounds like maybe  Billy and the Bubbleship (later republished as Mad Queen of Mordra) by Elwy Yost? (described under the literature tab here).

[Parasaurolophus]

Do you guys remember a children's SciFi story (a short novel, I think) in which the protagonist is forced to play human chess with an evil entity (a queen?), and in which captured pieces are executed? IIRC, the kid beats her with a fool's mate (or maybe scholar's mate).

Sounds like maybe  Billy and the Bubbleship (later republished as Mad Queen of Mordra) by Elwy Yost? (described under the literature tab here).

Hmm. The rest of the plot doesn't ring any bells, but it's got to be that! Thank you!

[jimbogumbo]

Do you guys remember a children's SciFi story (a short novel, I think) in which the protagonist is forced to play human chess with an evil entity (a queen?), and in which captured pieces are executed? IIRC, the kid beats her with a fool's mate (or maybe scholar's mate).

I was looking through this, but there is so much...

https://www.chess.com/forum/view/general/chess-in-science-fiction

[ergative]

Do you guys remember a children's SciFi story (a short novel, I think) in which the protagonist is forced to play human chess with an evil entity (a queen?), and in which captured pieces are executed? IIRC, the kid beats her with a fool's mate (or maybe scholar's mate).

The end of the first Harry Potter book has a chess game like this--but the evil entity is not evil, but a set of protective spells that the good guys set up that needed to be defused to protect the thing inside. But I don't think the chess was complex enough for specific strategies to be named like that.

[hmaria1609]

From the library: Sixteenth Street NW by John DeFerrari and Douglas P. Sefton (NF)
Local history about DC's 16th St., NW from its origins to present; this is one of the major traffic arteries in DC. Plenty of archival images and photos.