I'm between books. Normally that would mean I'd finished books, but in this particular case it means I've got several books going and am not sure if I want to pick any of them back up or read something else.
So before I traveled at the beginning of November I was 3/4 of the way through Sarah J. Maas' Crown of Midnight, 2nd book after Throne of Glass. But it wasn't moving very fast and I had no allowed checked luggage so I left the big trade paperback at home, and just never picked it back up. I've actually purchased #3 and #4 and they are sitting downstairs, so I should. But the character progress this book isn't motivating me.
I needed a electronic book at one point while waiting and started Neal Stephenson's Seveneves, I'm a big fan of NS, but the characters aren't catching me. This is still the most likely book for me to go back to, it's "solid".
I started reading the Area X Southern Reach trilogy, thinking it was SF. It's not. Which was a pleasant change of pace, but the first book of it was written so well it left me feeling unsettled, and there were NO ANSWERS, which was jarring considering I had assumed it was SF - very against genre. Because that's not the genre. Anyway, I started reading the second one and whiel reading it I get this vague sense of unease that the author is intentionally and successfully instilling, but I've been a little under the weather and that's not what I want right now, to be unsteady in my mind as well.
So I grabbed Walter Jon William's Dread Empire's Fall: The Praxis. A long time fan of WJW, I expected this would banish that unsteadiness. I'm not far into it but it feels ... old. Dated? I dunno, it's not grabbing me at all. I came in with high expectations, and by not hitting that high bar from the get go it's disappointed me.
I've got Ninefox Gambit by Yoon Ha Lee at the top of my (finally dwindling) TBR pile which I'm looking forward to, but right now with half my reading list being new-to-me authors who are disappointing I want to read something solid first and get out of this swamp of discontent so I don't go in hoping it will save me and then be turned off if it doesn't immediately. (Which I think is my real problem with the WJW book - I expected it to be a panacea to my reading woes, and when it wasn't I didn't give it time to develop into itself.)
No more buying books before the holidays. So I need to get my groove back. Getting over this mild cold(flu?) would probably help, I'm not as clear-headed as I want to be.
Part of me is toying with the idea of just tossing all of them into the hold bin and go reread something I've enjoyed multiple times before.
Advice?