I feel like I’ve lost my blogging mojo again, work’s been pretty busy and I just run out of momentum by the time evening comes round. Instead I’ve spent a few hours building beaver cities in the early release version of Timberborn. I find these sort of city building games so relaxing to play, focusing on the fate of my furry citizens distracts my brain from thinking to much about the real world.

Last week I read Lauren James’ Green Rising, about teenagers who develop the ability to grown plants from their bodies, and use their new found powers to take on the companies causing climate change. I thought this did a good job of capturing the zeitgeist, even down to recreating the kind of internet comments we could all do without. There’s even an Elon Musk type character, intent on colonising space rather than fixing Earth.

After being disappointed with Under the Whispering Door, I finally got round to The House in the Cerulean Sea, which everyone on Goodreads seems to adore. I needed a book for the Popsugar prompt “everyone seems to have read it but me” so I thought this would be perfect. I can see why people love it, but I’ve come to the conclusion that T.J. Klune’s writing is just not for me. It’s like a children’s story for adults, but I think I would just prefer the children’s story.

Then I listened to Q by Christina Dalcher for another pesky prompt that kept alluding me, and it was OK, but I felt it relied on the reader not really knowing what eugenics was, otherwise it was all very obvious. The main character was meant to be super smart, but she was quite slow to realise a lot of things. It can’t be set that far in the future, as there’s a grandmother who was in Germany during WWII, so how she was so oblivious to history, I don’t know. It also has a domestic abuse plot, which isn’t my favourite thing to read about.

I’m down to five books left for the Popsugar Reading Challenge and ten for Around the Year in 52 Books. I think because I have less exciting options for my remaining Popsugar prompts, I just want to get it done with now. I’ve had more luck picking out new releases for ATY, so I’m more positive about that challenge hanging around longer. Next year, remind me not to leave my least favourite prompts to last! 🤣