Book Chain, weeks 19 & 20
Jul. 26th, 2025 06:47 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
pedanther#22: Read a book that has a different setting (e.g. city, farm, boat, etc.) than the previous book.
No progress. None whatsoever. The prompt was so nebulous that nothing suggested itself, and I decided to lay it aside while I finished reading The Last English King, which is proving to be slow going.
A couple of days ago I wasn't in the mood for it, so I decided to try getting on with one of the monthly Random Book selections that have been piling up while I ignored them to do the book chain. I started reading the June selection, which proved to be a YA science fiction novel about a group of teenagers with unconvincing motivations on a planet whose society felt like three cultural stereotypes in a trenchcoat; by the end of the first chapter I was skimming and by the end of the second I'd given up. I crossed it off the list and generated a new random selection from the same prompt. This one was a detective novel with what I imagine was meant to be a charmingly hapless hero, and once again I'd gone off it by the end of the second chapter. My third attempt was a sci-fi comedy written in the 1950s by somebody whose sense of humour didn't have much overlap with mine: same result again. I don't remember what the fourth random selection was, because I took one look at it and decided it wasn't going to fare any better.
At about this point, it occurred to me that each time, as I counted the randomly selected number of places down the to-read list, my eye had lit upon The Serpent's Egg by Caroline Stevermer and I'd found myself wishing that it had been the random selection. So now I'm reading The Serpent's Egg, and pleased at finding fresh evidence that there are still books in the world that I actually enjoy reading.
No progress. None whatsoever. The prompt was so nebulous that nothing suggested itself, and I decided to lay it aside while I finished reading The Last English King, which is proving to be slow going.
A couple of days ago I wasn't in the mood for it, so I decided to try getting on with one of the monthly Random Book selections that have been piling up while I ignored them to do the book chain. I started reading the June selection, which proved to be a YA science fiction novel about a group of teenagers with unconvincing motivations on a planet whose society felt like three cultural stereotypes in a trenchcoat; by the end of the first chapter I was skimming and by the end of the second I'd given up. I crossed it off the list and generated a new random selection from the same prompt. This one was a detective novel with what I imagine was meant to be a charmingly hapless hero, and once again I'd gone off it by the end of the second chapter. My third attempt was a sci-fi comedy written in the 1950s by somebody whose sense of humour didn't have much overlap with mine: same result again. I don't remember what the fourth random selection was, because I took one look at it and decided it wasn't going to fare any better.
At about this point, it occurred to me that each time, as I counted the randomly selected number of places down the to-read list, my eye had lit upon The Serpent's Egg by Caroline Stevermer and I'd found myself wishing that it had been the random selection. So now I'm reading The Serpent's Egg, and pleased at finding fresh evidence that there are still books in the world that I actually enjoy reading.
