Getting Book Recommendations

 

Living in this time is just ... challenging. The news out of the US is (and always has been) overwhelming and it's a challenge to get out of that bubble and look local. Scrolling through social feeds is just too easy and often feels futile. If you can't affect where you live with your vote, worrying about the US is worse. To that end - since I'm a reader, I'm looking towards fiction to read.

I find, now that I'm older, it's a lot harder to find books to read based on their synopsis. I think it's a sign of the times as well that I find a lot of stories to be challenging. I end up re-reading what I have, which can also be problematic because some books just don't hold up well. I've been on GoodReads for quite a while but a lot of times the reviewers just don't hit the spot for what I want to know. That's why this new service, The StoryGraph, seems interesting. This article Why Goodreads is bad for books makes it sound up my alley...

Rather than just offering an explainer of a book’s plot, information such as “mood” and “pace” are voted on by The StoryGraph community. Next to descriptors such as “reflective” or “dark” are percentages of how many readers agree with these descriptions, along with votes on whether character development was strong or if the characters were loveable — and then, after all that, the star rating. 

I tend to read science fiction and right now, a lot of it is dystopic. A lot of earth settings are post-apocalyptic or just ignores science all together which doesn't work well for me. I enjoy finding new authors - for instance Martha Wells Murderbot series. And I think I prefer shorter stories.

I know how lucky I am to be able to turn away from the world's problems right now. Our area has a low infection rate. The economy (O&G) has been stressed since 2015, well before the pandemic struck but the provincial government that oversees this city (not the province I'm registered as living in) has been supporting health and education to get life normalized.

** comic from Whatever