Reading In/Out 10/20/2026

I know last week I said I was over the Reading In/Out, but I actually have some change, so here goes.

OUT

As You Wake, Break the Shell by Becky Chambers - Well, I finished this one. I might have missed the meaning of the title, because I'm still not sure what it means. We've got these two timelines, both following two women. In the early timeline, they meet and fall in love. In the later timeline, they are married. Put that in the setting of a colony on another planet (although the word planet is used loosely here), and there you go. Cora is a rorquil pilot. A rorquil is a space animal that humans have tamed to be their oxen, basically. The pilots fly them to ice quarries to supply the planet with water. The pilots have implants in their heads that connect to helmets that allow them to "speak" to their rorquil. Colibri is the rorquil in this story. Side note: I hate the way the audiobook distorts the voice of Colibri. It's very uncomfortable. Cygny is the other woman. She owns a plant store. Plants are very rare because the air is toxic. Cygny messes with genes and whatnot to create plants that grow better in their environment. She also created plants to treat illnesses the regular doctors won't treat. There is only so much medicine to go around, so only people deemed worthy get treatment. Of course, what she does is illegal. Cora goes to her because her job as a pilot has given her a disease she can't tell the medical profession about, because they would make her stop flying and kill Colibri. In the later era, they live on a different planet's moon, and Cygny is a renowned medical botanist. So something somewhere went right, but I have no idea how they got there. That's not in the story.

I feel kind of meh about this. Some folks say it's cozy sci-fi, but it doesn't feel very cozy to me. If it's sci-fi romance, I guess that works. I still feel like there is a big chunk of story missing.

CONTINUING

Humble Pi by Matt Parker - I have 70 pages left of this. I really hope I can finish it this week. It's still fun, and a good one to read in short chunks, which is pretty much all I have available for a work read.

Circe by Madeline Miller - I made it to the halfway mark this weekend. I was planning to go further, but I ended up spending most of Monday napping. I have yet to figure out how to read and nap at the same time. If I ever do, I'll let you know. The pages turn pretty quickly, and if I get a couple of hours to read, I can get pretty far along. The writing is very much like that of The Song of Achilles. Pretty sparse and dry. Not a lot of emotion. It's fine.

IN

Love, Like Apples by Jeff Zentner - I got this audiobook from Libro.fm. It comes out November 3. I love all of Zentner's YA books. I liked the other Adult book he wrote, too. It is a romance written from the man's point of view. This is a story about a kid growing up in Appalachia (like all his books) who takes up puppetry and then becomes part of a TV show in the 70s that got really famous (think Sesame Street). It's told like a documentary about the making of the show, according to the summary, which gives Daisy Jones and the Six vibes. That book was so convincing that people really tried to find albums by Daisy Jones and the Six.

The only reading happening today is audiobook and lunch reading. I might get some reading in tomorrow evening before bed. Thursday, I am taking my sister to get eye surgery done, so I will have plenty of reading time then. I'm looking forward to that.