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Part 2. #43: Bloodlands: Europe between Hitler and Stalin - Timothy Snyder: In which both Hitler and Stalin were crazy assholes to people from Poland to Ukraine. Most of the Jewish people killed in the Holocaust weren't killed in the concentration camps - they were shot. 4/5. #44: Rat Queens, vol. 1: Sass and Sorcery - Kurtis J. Wiebe: Another Hugo-nominated comic, in this case about a group of female adventurers. Recommended if you're a D&D nerd (or, like me, you played games like Baldur's Gate 2). 4/5. #45: Ancillary Sword - Ann Leckie: The sequel to Ancillary Justice. Many people don't seem to like this one, but I did. In fact, I thought it was slightly better than the first one, if only because there wasn't as much of the gimmicky Tumblr bait gender stuff. (Left Hand of Darkness did gender ambiguity earlier and far more convincingly, IMHO). However, I kind of want AS to win the Hugo, if only to poke Vox Day in the eye. (If you don't know who VD is, count yourself lucky). 3.5/5, rounded down to 3 on Goodreads. #46: Horrorstör - Grady Hendrix: In which a group of people stay the night in a haunted IKEA-esque store. Strikes a good balance between humour and horror. 4/5. #47: Saga vol. 4 - Brian K. Vaughan: The latest issue of Saga to date. Now to wait for vol. 5. 4/5. #48: Zone One - Colson Whitehead: A book about people in New York trying to survive against zombies. Interesting premise but the writing style didn't work in execution. 3/5. #49: The Manhattan Projects, vol. 1: Science Bad - Jonathan Hickman: The first set of issues in a series about what would happen if the Manhattan Project researched weird things after the atomic bomb. Includes people such as Einstein, Richard Feynman and J. Robert Oppenheimer. 4/5. #50: Lock In - John Scalzi: In which a disease causes many people to become unable to respond to stimulus, and society's response to said disease. There's more to it than that (including a murder mystery), but that was the best I could word it. I might check out some of his other books from the library, if only because of the next book. 4/5. #51: The Year of the Flood - Margaret Atwood: This book seems to get dumped on by lots of people. Not me, though - I liked it. OK, maybe it wasn't quite as good as Oryx and Crake, and some of the links to the former book were a bit contrived, but I enjoyed reading it. What does this book have to do with John Scalzi? The notion that maybe I should investigate books for myself and form my own opinions on them. (Not Ayn Rand or Terry Goodkind, though. Not interested in Objectivism or bad writing). 4/5. #52: Shards of Honour - Lois McMaster Bujold: The first book in the Vorkosigan universe. (OK, there's one book set earlier chronologically, but for all intents and purposes this is where the series began). I had trouble getting past the first page for a while, but once I did, I really enjoyed this book. Looking forward to reading more from the best author at Baen for a country mile. Will read Barrayar next, if only because it's the next book in chronological order. 4/5. Update on Booklord stuff: Increased number of books to read to 120. Challenges met: Female; Non-white author; History; Essay collection (read books by Jo Walton and Roxanne Gay, but didn't include them officially); Post-Modern; Something on either hate or love (multiple books); Something dealing with space; Something dealing with the unreal (Maplecroft); That one book that has been waiting for ages (Left Hand of Darkness); The colour red (if only on book covers).
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Jun 1, 2015 07:42
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Prolonged Shame posted:1) The Other Boleyn Girl - Philippa Gregory I did well in May. 38) I Come From the Stone Age - Heinrich Harrer: I really only read this because a coworker loaned it to me. It's the account of the author's expedition deep into the interior of Dutch New Guinea in the 60's and his first summits of the mountains there, as well as interesting info about the native population. The subject matter is interesting, but it is literally a transcription of his diary and can be a bit dry at times. 39) Akira Vol.5 - Katsuhiro Otomo: At this point I'm reading these just to finish the series. They're ok, but not really my thing. 40) An American Tragedy - Theodore Dreiser: The story of a young man in the early 20th century and his desperate social ambitions which culminate in tragedy. Brilliant character creation, maybe a bit overlong. 41) Throne of Jade - Naomi Novik: The second in the Temeraire series. Not quite as good as the first, but I will keep reading. I gather they get better as the series progresses. It's a fun concept (Napoleon with dragons). 42) The Hero of Ages (Mistborn #3) - Brandon Sanderson: Wow, I loved this. I wasn't sure where he was going to take this series, but I never would have predicted that ending. Immensely satisfying and very original. This was my first Sanderson series after finishing the Wheel of Time, and I will definitely be reading more. 43) Unfinished Portrait - Agatha Christie writing as Mary Westmacott: Loved this as well. AC wrote a handful of non-mystery novels under her pen name, and this one was amazing. It's essentially a portrait of a woman's personality throughout her life showing how it is shaped and changed by her experiences. It is supposedly the closest thing Agatha Christie wrote to an autobiography. It's difficult to describe but I recommend it if you can find it. 44) French Lessons: Adventures With Knife, Fork, and Corkscrew - Peter Mayle: I'm a big fan of his Provence series but this one just wasn't as good. There was no narrative connecting each section, though each was charming on its own. It felt like a collection of magazine articles. 45) Akira Vol. 6 - Katsuhiro Otomo: I'm not even sure what happened at the end. What a weird series. 46) Herbert Hoover - William E. Leuchtenburg: Hoover had the bad luck to be elected mere months before the stock market crash of 1929, and he bungled the administration of the great depression. He is one of those presidents, like Quincy Adams and Taft, who achieved more after their presidencies than during it. This is an adequate biography. I wanted a short one since I'm starting on a giant FDR bio next. 47) The Enchanted April - Elizabeth Von Armin: An enjoyable read about four English women who rent an Italian castle for a month and the changes it creates in all of their lives. Short and sweet. Much better than the movie based on it. 48) Paris - Edward Rutherfurd: Not his best work. I've loved some of his other historical epics (Sarum, London) but this one just didn't work. Part of the charm of his books is that you get to watch the city grow and change and basically be a character in the book, and with the exception of the section on the building of the Eiffel Tower, he failed to do that in this book. He basically just namedrops famous locales in Paris and calls it a day. Total: 48/100 Presidential bios: 5/12 Non Fiction barring prez bios: 10/25 Stravinsky's Challenge: 1. The vanilla read a set number of books in a year. 48/100 2. Read a female author - The Other Boleyn Girl - Philippa Gregory 3. The non-white author - Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass - Frederick Douglass 4. Philosophy - The Art of War - Sun Tzu 5. History - In the Heart of the Sea: the Tragedy of the Whaleship Essex - Nathaniel Philbrick 6. An essay - The Best of Edward Abbey - Edward Abbey 9. Something absurdist - Perfume: The Story of a Murderer - Patrick Süskind 10. The Blind Owl - The Blind Owl - Sadegh Hedayat 11. Something on either hate or love - Arabella - Georgette Heyer 12. Something dealing with space - Foundation - Isaac Asimov 13. Something dealing with the unreal - The Well of Ascension - Brandon Sanderson 15. Something published this year - Shadow Scale - Rachel Hartman 16. That one book that has been sitting on your desk waiting for a long time - Giant's Bread - Mary Westmacott 17. A play - Steel Magnolias - Robert Harling 18. Biography - William Howard Taft: The Travails of a Progressive Conservative - Jonathan Lurie 19. The color red - A Spy Among Friends: Kim Philby and the Great Betrayal - Robert Macintyre 20. Something banned or censored - The Giver - Lois Lowry 21. Short story(s) - Lost in the City - Edward P. Jones 22. A mystery - The Maltese Falcon - Dashiell Hammet Someone give me a wildcard!
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Jun 1, 2015 15:54
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Prolonged Shame posted:Someone give me a wildcard! How about A Brief History of Seven Killings by Marlon James
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Jun 1, 2015 17:14
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Female authors: 8/24 Non-fiction: 4/12 Goodreads. If you've enjoyed any of David Thorne's other stuff, you should read Look Evelyn. It calls itself a collection of essays but I'd say it's more like a novel, if a slightly unconventional one. Reminded me a lot of Mil Millington, but funnier. If you've never heard of Thorne, read Missing Missy. If you like that, you'll probably like this too. Spider-Man and the X-Men was a pretty fun book, despite the villains mostly being crap. Spidey is a fun character and his students all work well. I have no idea what's going on in the surrounding Marvel universe, but whatever it is it apparently turned the surviving X-Men into dicks though, so I didn't much care for them in this story, but fortunately they're not in it that much. The villains are my main complaint, because Sauron, Stegron and Mojo are all really dumb and I didn't much like this version of Mr Sinister either. Those aren't major complaints though, because Spider-Man really carries the whole thing on his own. Also published as Ignorance is Blitz, Non Campus Mentis is just one of the absolute funniest things I've read. I had to stop many times because I was laughing too hard to continue reading. I first read Guards! Guards! around 15 years ago, and I've read it many times since then, but not in a while now. I read it this time for a book club, and it was OK. I don't know how much of that is down to me being too familiar with it, or whether I just wouldn't like it as much if I read it for the first time now as I did when I actually first read it. It feels rather like the story got away from Pratchett as he was writing it. He starts out with this premise of the classic fantasy adventure, dragon threatens city, but instead of a hero coming to kill it the story focuses on the guards, the little guys who would normally be ineffective allies or minor villains. But then it seems like he accidentally wrote a much better book, but never quite purged that original premise from it, so it ends up a bit tonally inconsistent, and the plot doesn't really work properly. In the end the problem is basically solved without any of the characters actually doing anything, and it just kind of ends. It's still pretty funny though, and Vimes and Vetinari are great characters. I read The Three Musketeers some time ago and really enjoyed it, but only just got around to reading the sequel now, and unfortunately I found it fairly disappointing. Twenty Years After just feels incredibly slow. Nothing much seems to happen for the first half of the book, and even then it's a slow start. The last quarter of the book is pretty good, but not good enough to make up for the rest. I had planned to read the entire series, but at this point I'm not sure I will. I cetainly won't be starting the next one any time soon.
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Jun 1, 2015 18:46
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May has been a lovely month for reading for a bunch of different reasons. In any case... 1. The vanilla read a set number of books in a year. - 24/40 3. The non-white author - The Satanic Verses by Salman Rushdie 4. Philosophy - Either Derrida or Spinoza 5. History 6. An essay - Where the Stress Falls. Essays. by Susan Sontag. 9. Something absurdist - Waiting for Godot 15. Something published this year or the past three months 16. That one book that has been sitting on your desk waiting for a long time - Feast of the Goat by Vargas Llosa 17. A play - Waiting for Godot 18. Biography - Ingar Sletten Kolloen's Hamsun biographies 19. The color red 21. Short story(s) - The Lady with the Dog, and other stories by Anton Chekhov 22. A mystery 1. Hear the Wind Sing, Haruki Murakami 2. Pinball 1974, Haruki Murakami 3. On The Beach, Neil Shute 4. Collected Poems by Per Sivle 5. History of the Siege of Lisbon, José Saramago 6. Wayfarers, Knut Hamsun 7. The Seed, Tarjei Vesaas 8. Morning and Evening, Jon Fosse 9. The Collected Poems of Alberto Caeiro, Fernando Pessoa 10. Doktor Faustus, Thomas Mann 11. Collection of poems, Gabriela Mistral 12. Doctor Glas, Hjalmar Söderberg 13. Love in the Time of Cholera, Gabriel García Márquez 14. Invisible Cities, Italo Calvino 15. Inherent Vice, Thomas Pynchon 16. Road to the Worl'd End, Sigurd Hoel 17. The Cyberiad, Stanislaw Lem 18. Heart of Darkness, Joseph Conrad 19. The Clown, Heinrich Böll 20. The Death of Ivan Ilyich, Lev Tolstoy 21. Fathers and Sons, Ivan Turgenev 22. A Theatrical Novel, Mikhail Bulgakov 23. Sleepless, Jon Fosse 24. Woodcutters, Thomas Bernhard 24/40 June will hopefully be a much better month.
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Jun 2, 2015 15:31
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I managed to read more books in May than I did in the 5 prior months combined. Week-long vacations are wonderful things! 1. The Periphery, William Gibson 2. Station Eleven, Emily St. John Mandel 3. Saint Leibowitz & The Wild Horse Woman, Walter Miller 4. The Disaster Artist, Greg Sestero 5. Heart of Darkness, Joseph Conrad (and about 300 pages of essays about it) 6. Blood Meridian, Cormac McCarthy 7. The Science Fiction of Edgar Allan Poe, Edgar Allan Poe 8. Find Me, Laura van den Berg 9. Death of a Revolutionary: The Last Mission of Che Guevara, Richard L. Harris 10. Blackwater, Jeremy Scahill 11. The Sun Also Rises, Ernest Hemingway 12. Eichmann in Jeruselem, Hannah Arendt 13. Star Trek: Shadow Lord, Laurence Yep 14. Almost Transparent Blue, Ryu Murakami 15. Foundation, Isaac Asimov 16. Foundation & Empire, Isaac Asimov 17. Second Foundation, Isaac Asimov 18. Roadside Picnic, Boris & Arkady Stugatsky 19. The Martian, Andy Weir 19/52 books so far. Challenges 2, 3, 6, 8, 11, 12, 13, 15, 21 knocked out. Eichmann in Jeruselem could fill 4 or 5, but not counting it at the moment since it's sort of neither.
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Jun 2, 2015 16:08
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I only managed 3 books this month - finishing off the Notes from Underground/The Double double book, First Novel, and The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao. I also read 513 pages of Rise and Fall of the Third Reich which only leaves me 640ish pages to go  I'm well on course for 40 books this year and might up to 52 if I'm doing good at mid year still.I liked The Double less than Notes from Underground. For some reason I didn't really get it until right near the end. First Novel on the other hand I raced through; a pacey, exciting mystery (ticking this one off!) which is either about dogging or double murder, maybe. The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao I similarly tore through pretty quickly - I think I read half of it one night and the rest the next. It's a combination history of the Dominican Republic under Trujillo, the immigrant experience of the Dominican diaspora, and a love letter to 80s nerd things. The language is fast-paced and witty and full of the dialect of the people it's about. I also read an essay, Fascinating Fascism (http://www.nybooks.com/articles/archives/1975/feb/06/fascinating-fascism/). I'm not counting it on the list because why would I, but I'll count it for the booklord thing. Year to Date: 21 01. The Establishment: And how they get away with it (Owen Jones) 02. Mussolini and Fascist Italy (Martin Blinkhorn) 03. Love in the Time of Cholera (Gabriel Garcia Marquez) 04. All You Need is Kill (Hiroshi Sakurazaka) 05. Theft: A Love Story (Peter Carey) 06. Stalin (Kevin McDermott) 07. Heart of Darkness (Joseph Conrad) 08. Revenge (Yoko Ogawa) 09. The Good Soldier Svejk and his Fortunes in the Great War (Jaroslav Hasek) 10. The Buried Giant (Kazuo Ishiguro) 11. after the quake (Haruki Murakami) 12. The Colour of Magic (Terry Pratchett) 13. The Light Fantastic (Terry Pratchett) 14. The Girls of Room 28: Friendship, Hope and Survival in Theresienstadt (Hannelore Brenner) 15. Equal Rites (Terry Pratchett) 16. Invisible Cities (Italo Calvino) 17. Iron Curtain: The Crushing of Eastern Europe 1944-1956 (Anne Applebaum) 18. Running with the Kenyans (Adharanand Finn) 19. Notes from Underground and The Double (Fyodor Dostoyevsky) 20. First Novel (Nicholas Royle) 21. The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao (Junot Diaz) Booklord categories: 2, 3, 5, 6, 8, 9, 11, 13, 15, 18, 19, 21, 22.
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Jun 2, 2015 16:35
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thespaceinvader posted:1: Cryptonomicon by Neal Stephenson Where A Slip of the Keyboard was an ode to the autobiography Pterry will never write, A Blink of the Screen is a testament to all the wonderful ideas he had that never made it to the published page - and some that did, in various forms. The highlight for me was Camelot which I would dearly love to have seen made into a full-length novel. The rest varied from really fun, to interesting takes on other areas of his fiction and the Disc. Very pleased to have read it. Next, When to Rob a Bank by Levitt & Dubner. A birthday present. And I have my kobo loaded with scads of trashy sf/f from storybundle and humble bundle, so there's that to keep me going. I want also to read Firefight but I want a hard copy of that, and to read Of Noble Family by Mary Robinetter Kowal but gently caress an ebook that costs Ł16.91 holy poo poo.
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Jun 2, 2015 21:16
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10, 11, 12: The first three books of Kushiel's Legacy by Jacqueline Carey. (Kushiel's Dart, Kushiel's Chosen, Kushiel's Avatar.) The first book starts out incredibly slowly and is front-loaded with exposition that doesn't necessarily pay off even in the first novel. The next two books are pretty solid adventures with an established romance subplot. Re-read the first and followed up with the second two on a rec from a fellow Thunderdomer. Needed to research some fantasy romance! 13. The Orphan's Tales: In the Night Garden by Catherynne Valente. Several people have recommended her works for their lyrical prose style. Night Garden uses the stories-within-stories framing device and is more notable in that most of the protagonists are female characters, which gets me hype. Personally, though, I find the actual style to be overwrought and nearly at the edge of my tolerance for cleverness and purpleness.
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Jun 3, 2015 14:15
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quote:
My reading for May: Wolf in White Van - John Darnielle I enjoyed this, although Darnielle's prose is kind of uneven. Some great bits, and also some parts that dragged a bit. The book does a solid job of withholding important information without being annoying about it, and everything ends up converging in a satisfying way. Interesting concept for a novel, but I feel like something is missing. Despite occasional flashes of brilliance, it's exploring well-worn themes without really saying anything insightful, and the protagonist's motivations for pretty much everything end up being a little too opaque for my tastes. Submergence - J.M. Ledgard Another interesting narrative that follows the parallel (occasionally intertwining) lives of a British spy captured by jihadists in Somalia and a female bio-mathematician preparing to explore the deepest parts of the ocean. It's a book about isolation and the depths of not only the earth but the self as well, and the way the novel plays with scale is pretty cool. The prose is solid enough, though Ledgard, who is a political / war correspondent by trade, is fond of mini info-dumps that are often not interesting enough to justify their obtrusiveness. It manages to be a really suspenseful book, which is pretty impressive considering that part of it is a love story and part of it is essentially just preparing for a deep-sea exploration. Both Flesh and Not - David Foster Wallace DFW's third collection of essays, and probably his most uneven. It has a few legitimately great essays (Federer Both Flesh and Not, The Empty Plenum) a few forgettable ones (including Rhetoric and the Math Melodrama, a dense review of two lovely novels about math), and a couple that are just bad (The (As It Were) Seminal Importance of Terminator 2, The Best of the Prose Poem, and Back in New Fire, which, imo, is pretty easily the worst essay he ever wrote.) His first two collections were much better, but I suppose that's kind of to be expected from a posthumous collection of assorted scraps. The best stuff in this collection was already available elsewhere, so unless you are a huge DFW fan, you can pretty safely pass this one up. When You are Engulfed in Flames - David Sedaris Sedaris is funny as hell, and he makes it seem so effortless. This is a really great collection--I don't think any of the essays were bad, and even the ones that weren't great were still worth a laugh or two. A decent number of the essays deal with his time living in Normandy, but there's a surprising amount of variety, ranging from buying drugs in a North Carolina mobile home to using album covers and pictures of terrorists to scare away crazed songbirds. Sedaris has a way of making even the most mundane things funny and bizarre, and if you like humorous essays at all, I definitely recommend checking this out. Hard-Boiled Wonderland and the End of the World - Haruki Murakami I've read quite a few of Murakami's short stories, but this was my first novel. This is really two narratives with distinct styles that eventually converge - on one hand you've got a lite-sci-fi ode to Raymond Chandler, and on the other, there's a sort of fantasy setting that takes strong queues from Kafka. It's a cool idea, and both sections really do end up feeling completely unique, to the point that I would easily believe two different authors wrote them. I will say that his prose is much, much stronger in the fantastical section--the stripped-down, hard-boiled style is snappy and suspenseful, but it leans on some of the staler cliches of the genre, resulting in prose that feels a bit parodic. I need to read a couple more of his novels to really make a fair assessment, but my immediate impression is that he is a better short story writer than a novelist. The Pillowman - Martin McDonagh This one is a play, so I'm not counting it toward my book total. The basic gist is that an author living in a totalitarian police state is being interrogated because a string of recent child murders bear a close resemblance to the plots of his stories. It's a really strange play, and I'd like to see it performed some day to see how they handle certain parts of it. The interrogation serves as kind of a frame narrative for the stories, which are all pretty creepy and depressing. For instance, the titular Pillowman is a story of a man made of--you guessed it--pillows, who is tasked with traveling back in time and convincing children to commit suicide in order to avoid a life full of suffering. Reading the synopsis of this play will make it sound insane and goofy, but it is actually surprisingly well-crafted, and it ends up contain plenty of both humor and sadness.
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Jun 3, 2015 19:12
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May. 24. We Need to Talk About Kevin. Lionel Shriver. This was and interesting book, it was kind of hard to read and frankly, the epistolary form didn't help that much. The story is pretty good but the characters exude antipathy. 25. The Last Hero. Terry Pratchett. Good quick story. At times it felt disjointed but it was entertaining 26. Grave Peril. Jim Butcher. Better than the others in the series. The story has some big holes but it's entertaining enough. 27. Barrayar. Louis McMaster Bujold. Pretty good. Something was off with the characters, but it works within the story. 28. The Art of Deception. Kevin Mitnick. The examples of social engineering are pretty good, Mitnick doesn't have enough material by himself but he still knows are lot about it. A good read. 29. The Amazing Maurice and his Educated Rodents. Terry Pratchett. You can notice the audience this book was written for. It was still good. 29/60
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Jun 4, 2015 04:51
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Oh, I just found this now, but am still going to take on the challenge (if I'm allowed to jump in so late)! Since the year is already half over, my numeric goal is going to be 25 books. I'm going to count a book I'm partway through towards the challenge as long as it's less than half-finished now.
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Jun 4, 2015 19:06
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Grizzled Patriarch posted:Both Flesh and Not - David Foster Wallace I almost feel that "Federer Both Flesh And Not" is worth the price of admission alone.
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Jun 5, 2015 04:55
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Blind Sally posted:I almost feel that "Federer Both Flesh And Not" is worth the price of admission alone. Definitely, it's a great piece and easily in the running for the best sports-related essay of all time, imo. The New Yorker still has it up for free, though, which kind of takes the wind out of the collection's sails a bit, especially since one of the other strong essays is a reprint from A Supposedly Fun Thing I'll Never Do Again. "The Empty Plenum" is still really good, though, and it got me to finally pick up Wittgenstein's Mistress, so I'm still glad I read it.
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Jun 5, 2015 07:06
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Talas posted:27. Barrayar. Louis McMaster Bujold. Pretty good. Something was off with the characters, but it works within the story. The "shopping" bit remains one of my favourite things ever.
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Jun 5, 2015 10:09
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Update through just now: Previously: 1. Menneskefluene by Hans Olav Lahlum. 2. Teckla by Steven Brust. 3. Ultima by Stephen Baxter. 4. Satellittmenneskene by Hans Olav Lahlum. 5. REAMDE by Neal Stephenson. 6. Atlas of Remote Islands by Judith Schalansky 7. Annihilation by Jeff VanDermeer. 8. The Last Ringbearer by Kirill Yeskov. 9. Njĺlssoga (aka Njĺls saga, the Saga of Burnt Niall, etc. in various translations) by unknown author. 10. The Three-Body Problem by Liu Cixin. 11. Katalysatormordet by Hans Olav Lahlum. 12. The Man Who Mistook His Wife for a Hat by Oliver Sacks. 13. De Fem Fyrstikkene by Hans Olav Lahlum. 14. Pastoralia by George Saunders. 15. Kameleonmenneskene by Hans Olav Lahlum. New: 16. Academic Exercises by K.J. Parker. Well, Tom Holt, it turns out. Collection of shorter works themed around the study of what is certainly not magic in a fantasy world where magic certainly does not exist (it's just a kind of science that's not entirely understood, you see). Clever and funny as poo poo. 17. Straits of Hell by Taylor Anderson. #10 in the Destroyermen series, about a WW2 US military vessel stranded in an alternate Earth full of sentient dinosaurs and poo poo. Good action although it kind of feels like the series should start to approach a conclusion soon. 18. Seveneves by Neal Stephenson. Two-thirds desperate apocalypse, one-third far-future speculation. Liked it but did not quite love it. So far: 18/40 overall goal, of which 1/5 allowed rereads 5/10 Norwegian books 4/5 nonfiction Booklord challenge points met: 3 (Three-Body Problem) 5 (Njĺlssoga), 8 (Pastoralia) 12 (Ultima) 13 (Teckla; teleporting sorceror-assassins aren't particularly real) 14 (The Man Who Mistook His Wife for a Hat) 15 (Ultima again, published November 2014) 16 (Njĺlssoga) 19 (Three-Body Problem) 21 (De Fem Fyrstikkene) 22 (Menneskefluene).
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Jun 5, 2015 13:59
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A slow month in number of books read, but no rereads.Booklord Challenge Update posted:1. 54/96 books read; 10 nonfiction (19%), 19 rereads (35%) 49. Five-Twelfths of Heaven by Melissa Scott 50. Silence in Solitude by Melissa Scott 51. The Empress of Earth by Melissa Scott Space opera where FTL drives work by way of "the music of heaven". Pilots are conductor-mystics, engineers are organists. It starts with an inheritance dispute, a polyamorous marriage-of-convenience, and space pirates, and never really slows down after that. The last book was not what I expected, but in a good way, and the ending was quite satisfying. Definitely going to look for more books by her. 52. Palace of Illusions by Chitra Banerjee Divakaruni A novelization of the Mahabharata (which I have heard of but never read), from the perspective of Panchali (the wife of five of the main characters in the original epic). Good, but kind of stressful to read; I find tragedies easier the less you know about them in advance, and this one you can see coming from a long way off even if you haven't read the original. A horrible Rube Goldberg machine of vengeance where you insert Unforgivable Insult into slot A, and three generations later pipe Q dispenses Everyone You Love Is Dead. 53. Rockets and People, Volume 1 by Boris Chertok The first volume of Chertok's massive four-volume history of the Soviet rocket program, from the 1920s to the fall of the USSR. A combination autobiography, collection of memoirs, and comprehensive history of the space program, the first volume extends from Chertok's childhood and prewar work as an aircraft electrician, to the end of Soviet rocket research in East Germany a few years after WW2, when they pack up and move everyone and everything back into Russia. It's not as smooth a read as Ignition!, but is still fascinating. The first volume is primarily concerned with aviation, as Chertok didn't become heavily involved in rocketry until the war, but the BI-1 rocket-powered interceptor sees a fair amount of discussion. One thing that I found fascinating was reminders of what aeroplane design was like in those eras by mentions of when it changed. For example, he describes their first experience designing a plane with these fancy new "flaps" that let it change the wing cross-section for takeoff and landing -- thus reminding the reader that everything mentioned prior to that in the book didn't have them! I was stoked to start Volume 2, which is where things really get off the ground -- so to speak -- but it's a double-page PDF which my e-reader chokes on, so I took a break while figuring out a way to reformat it. 54. The Hot Rock by Donald E. Westlake The first Dortmunder book! The best way I can describe Dortmunder's crew is that they are the A-Team of thievery -- which is to say, they're very good at what they do, very unlucky, and more than a little crazy. By the end of the book they've conducted six heists, cons, or raids of various kinds and started work on a seventh and still haven't really gotten what they were after. It's rather more slapstick than, say, the Lies of Locke Lamora. Groke posted:16. Academic Exercises by K.J. Parker. Well, Tom Holt, it turns out. Collection of shorter works themed around the study of what is certainly not magic in a fantasy world where magic certainly does not exist (it's just a kind of science that's not entirely understood, you see). Clever and funny as poo poo. Wait, do we know for sure that KJP is Tom Holt now? I've never read any of Holt's stuff, but I've heard of him mainly as a comedy author. KJP's books are about as far from comedy as you can get. 
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Jun 5, 2015 17:26
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1. The vanilla read a set number of books in a year. 27/40 2. Read a female author. Glenda Dawn Goss - Sibelius, a Life 3. The non-white author. Shohei Ooka - Fires on teh Plain 4. Philosophy 5. History 6. An essay. Andrew Durkin - Decomposition 7. A collection of poetry 8. Something post-modern. Thomas Pynchon - Bleeding Edge 9. Something absurdist. Thomas Bernhard - The Loser 10. The Blind Owl. Sadegh Hedayat - The Blind Owl 11. Something on either hate or love . Charles Dickens - A Tale of Two Cities 12. Something dealing with space. Olaf Stapledon - The Last and First Men 13. Something dealing with the unreal. Milorad Pavic - Dictionary of the Kazhars 14. Wildcard (Some one else taking the challenge will tell you what to read). Arthur C. Clarke - Rendezvous with Rama 15. Something published this year or the past three months 16. That one book that has been sitting on your desk waiting for a long time. Vasily Grossman - Life and Fate 17. A play 18. Biography . Elias Canetti - Memoirs (3 books!) 19. The color red. Roberto Bolano - 2666 20. Something banned or censored 21. Short story(s). Anton Chekhov - Selected Stories 22. A mystery. Patrick Modiano - Missing Person PLUS THESE BOOKS, ALSO: Roberto Bolano - The Savage Detectives Kobo Abe - The Woman in the Dunes Olaf Stapledon - Star Maker Robert Musil - The Man Without Qualities part 1 John Williams - Stoner Halldor Laxness - The Fish Can Sing THIS UPDATE Musil - The Man Without Qualities, vol. 1 - This book is a masterpiece, one of those super important and good works of continental modernism between the wars. The plot is really simple: 30 something dude gets a job with an upperclass cousin to plan for the the 70th birthday of the emperor of the Austro-Hungarian empire. He meets a bunch of people, and the author writes a poo poo ton of philosophical/sociological digressions. The digressions (which take up the majority of the book, probably like 85%) are the best part. I opened the book at random to see if I could find a cool paragraph, guess what, I did. quote:These days, with everything in the world being talked about helter-skelter, when prophets and charlatans rely on the same phrases, except for certain subtle differences no busy man has the time to keep track of, and editors are constantly pestered with alarms that someone or other may be a genius, it is very hard to recognize the true value of a man or an idea; all one can do is keep an ear cocked for the moment when all the murmurs and whispers and shufflings at the editor's door grow loud enough to be admitted as the voice of the people. From that moment on, however, genius does enter a new state. It ceases to be a windy business of book or drama reviews, with all their contradictions, which the paper's ideal reader will take no more seriously than the babble of children, but has achieved the status of a fact, with all the consequences that entails. if u like this, read the whole book. 5/5 Hedayet - The Blind Owl. I really liked this book, without really understanding everything that happened, but that's ok. It's like a real dreamy & dark fever dream, and there are lots of neat recurring motifs to keep you on your toes. Probably have to reread it and get some JSTOR essays or something to level up my crit reading attribute. 4.3/5 Williams - Stoner. This is the life story of a turn of the century Missouri turned English Language Prof named William Stoner. He gets married to a lovely woman, gets his PHD, has a kid, has an affair, gets involved in university politics, and then dies. The novel has this really beautiful tone, and doesn't shy away from like investigating Stoner's failures and emotional emptiness, which is good & very literary and appealing. This is sort of mitigated, IMO, by these three things: 1. Stoner is a fuckin spineless sad sack 2. Stoner is a poor father 3. Stoner apparently rapes his wife? This last point is sorta passed over without much fuss in the novel, and really only focuses on how Stoner feels about it (guilt & a little self loathing). The tone is always like this sadness mixed with a little gentle irony, where the author 'bears witness' or whatever to a life lived simply for love (of the English language), but the tone is maintained because they don't talk about the rapes. The novel is very good otherwise. I'm torn, but I'm gonna give this a 3.8/5 Laxness - The Fish Can Sing. A young man grows up in Iceland, and develops a strange relationship with Iceland's most famous cultural export: an Opera singer whom no one in Iceland has ever heard sing. A good book about communism, the power of art, being tru 2 urself, and some other poo poo too. 4.8/5
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Jun 5, 2015 21:50
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Someone give me a wildcard.
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Jun 6, 2015 06:21
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DannyTanner posted:Someone give me a wildcard. The Ego and His Own by Max Stirner.
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Jun 6, 2015 08:33
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ToxicFrog posted:
Yep, it was officially revealed in April. We were all surprised as gently caress. I've read some Holt but it was ages ago; Parker has been a favourite of mine for about as long as the books have been coming out.
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Jun 6, 2015 12:55
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Progress: 10 of 25 books 1. The Bone Clocks, David Mitchell. 5/5. 2. The Martian, Andy Weir. 2/5. Booklord Challenge 1 completed: Read a book about space. 3. The Blind Owl, Sadegh Hedayat. 0/5. Booklord Challenge 2 completed: Read this lovely book. 4. Atlas of Remote Islands - Fifty Islands I have Never Set Foot On and Never Will, Judith Schalansky. 5/5 Booklord Challenge 3 completed: Read a female author. 5 The Golem and The Djinni, Helene Wecker. 4/5 Booklord Challenge 4 completed: Read a book about the unreal. 6. The Magicians, Lev Grossman. 5/5 7. The Magician King, Lev Grossman. 5/5 8. The Magician's Land, Lev Grossman. 5/5 9. Wolf In White Van, John Darnielle. 5/5 10. The Water Knife, Paolo Bacigalupi. I'm torn on this one to a certain extent. It's not that this book isn't good, it's that it's not as good as The Windup Girl, and the ambiguity that Bacigalupi plays with in terms of timeline and setting weaken the effort. According to the author (via Twitter), The Water Knife is intended to serve as a kind of prequel to his first YA novel, Ship Breaker. But there's a disconnect. In most of Bacigalupi's work, everything takes place in a post-petroleum world where the ice caps have melted, and we've gone on to create things life human/animal hybrids and other advanced technologies, when at the same time places like the U.S. have collapsed into total poo poo - or under risen seas. In The Water Knife we're not at that place where we've run out of oil or the ice caps have melted, but climate change is already causing megadroughts with no end in sight, super-tornados and a few of the "city killer" hurricanes featured in Ship Breaker. The central idea in The Water Knife is that there's a power struggle over water between Califorina, Las Vegas and Phoenix. Texas and the rest of Arizona have already been screwed by Cali and Vegas, with hundreds of thousands of people starved out, displaced, etc. due to their access to water being shut off. So a major thing that bugged me about the plot is how certain details were not filled in at all by Bacigalupi. Why was Cali so powerful? Did the United States still exist or had it fallen apart into the city states featured in The Drowned Cities? And why would centuries-old "water rights" to parts of the Colorado written down on paper be worth anything at all in a world where the idea of enforceable laws has already collapsed? The powers of Vegas operate with impunity, to the point where they can rain down missiles of a target without fear, and a shallow villain called "the Vet" gets to run an entire town and feed women who displease him to a pack of hyenas. The idea that someone could stand up and say, "Behold, this parchment says we have the right to the Colorado River!" and everyone would have to abide by that is pretty dumb. It's like Mad Max rolling up on Bartertown saying he has an official letter from 50 years ago that makes him King of Everything, and then everyone abides by that automatically. Bottom line - the setting clashes too much with the story and makes a lot of the tension of the narrative too unbelievable. Bacigalupi also has a bad habit of having his protagonist get wounded to the point of death but then miraculously hang on way longer than they realistically should. Verdict: 3.5 out of 5. Booklord challenge completed - Read a book published in the last three months
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Jun 7, 2015 16:33
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thespaceinvader posted:1: Cryptonomicon by Neal Stephenson Not sure what's next, depends what takes my fancy from the stacks of guff in my kobo. I was reading Jacaranda by Cherie Priest for a bit and I think I'll finish that off, then something, not sure what.
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Jun 9, 2015 22:56
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ToxicFrog posted:
All four volumes are available on Amazon for 2$ each if you don't want to have to mess with them. http://www.amazon.com/Rockets-Peopl...kets+and+people I ran out of steam partway through vol. 3, personally. Mostly because Chertok introduces people like once and then assumes you remember them way later and it's hard to keep track of everyone (also I'm not very technical so I had a lot of moments of  ). Do you have any recommendations for other space race books that are worth picking up? I loves me some early spaceflight history.
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Jun 10, 2015 04:56
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Radio! posted:All four volumes are available on Amazon for 2$ each if you don't want to have to mess with them. I got it working in the end, and also I don't trust Kindle DRM fuckery to work properly with my e-reader in the first place. quote:I ran out of steam partway through vol. 3, personally. Mostly because Chertok introduces people like once and then assumes you remember them way later and it's hard to keep track of everyone (also I'm not very technical so I had a lot of moments of Yeah, I have a lot of trouble keeping track of the different people and organizations, but I'm mostly here for the tech, the overall history of Russian spaceflight, and the "and then the landing gear fell off and he had to land on one ski and one wing" stories, so I just roll with it. The stuff I read about the space race growing up was mostly written in the 80s, so there was lots of information about the Mercury/Gemini/Apollo programs, but the Soviet side of things was just a bit about Sputnik and Vostok and then "and then they were working on a moon rocket, probably, but who the gently caress knows" because most of this information was super-secret until the collapse of the USSR in 1991. quote:Do you have any recommendations for other space race books that are worth picking up? I loves me some early spaceflight history. It's not about the space race specifically, but Ignition: an informal history of liquid fuel rocket propellants is a fantastic read and the PDF is available for free online. I've heard Stages to Saturn and The Kremlin's Nuclear Sword both recommended, but haven't read either. The Spaceflight Megathread over in SAL might have some good recommendations if you ask.
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Jun 10, 2015 15:26
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I read the Stone Gods by Jeanette Winterson which was pretty cool, basically about the human race perpetually repeating itself by reaching the space age just as it has demolished a planet with global warming, then narrowly escaping to another process to repeat the process. It also deals with AI and what it means to be human. I also went to Vegas last weekend and on the way there/by the pool/on the way back I finished Half a Yellow Sun by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie and Shakespeare by Bill Bryson (this one for my biography challenge item). Half a Yellow Sun was powerful stuff, I am definitely going to read more stuff from Adichie. Bryson is always really solid as well, I basically chose the book because I am a huge fan of his, not so much for my interest in Shakespeare (although that has increased after reading the book). Right now I am reading A Frolic of His Own by William Gaddis. He is one of the few big names in postmodernism I haven't read so I thought I would use him for my challenge, and this was one of the two the Chicago Public Library had for loan on Kindle. It is hilarious as hell though, so I will probably read more Gaddis later in the year.
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Jun 10, 2015 16:21
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thespaceinvader posted:1: Cryptonomicon by Neal Stephenson I have another collected-blogs book next; this time by David Mitchell.
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Jun 11, 2015 23:47
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thespaceinvader posted:I really enjoyed Jacaranda. It was well-written, I liked the characterisation, I thought it was a well-told ghost story. I didn't quite feel like it was really necessary for it to be set in the Clockwork Century though - with the sole exception of the zombie nun there was absolutely nothing in the novel that wouldn't have worked as just a horror story set in civil-war-era Texas. Meh, well. For what it's worth, the nun is a werewolf, not a zombie.
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Jun 12, 2015 19:53
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Ah, fair enough, I've not read enough of Clockwork Century to know it has werewolves yet, so I just assumed based on the first two books what she was. Looking back, I should probably have guessed.
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Jun 13, 2015 00:34
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thespaceinvader posted:Ah, fair enough, I've not read enough of Clockwork Century to know it has werewolves yet, so I just assumed based on the first two books what she was. Looking back, I should probably have guessed. Fun fact--Eileen's actually a cameo from an older novella, Dreadful Skin, that isn't part of the CC. And oh yeah, you mentioned there was no reason for this book to be set in the CC--it originally wasn't supposed to be. It was supposed to be a standalone horror novella, but the publisher basically said "CC or walk". 
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Jun 13, 2015 01:15
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So, back in January, I put off joining the thread. I completely failed last year's reading challenge, and didn't know if I wanted to do it again. I eventually did sign up for a challenge on Goodreads, but never got around to the thread, so here it is: five months and change of activity, all at once. Here's my Goodreads profile, in case I somehow missed adding you. I could always use more friends. I have signed up for a challenge of 30 books this year. Due to increased time spent on treadmills and exercise bikes, it seems very likely I will surpass that total. The list far this year 1: The Abyss Beyond Dreams (Peter F. Hamilton) 2: 11/22/63 (Stephen King) 3: Lock In (John Scalzi) 4: In the Night Garden (Catherynne M. Valente) 5-10: The Black Echo, The Black Ice, The Concrete Blonde, The Last Coyote, Trunk Music, Angel's Flight (Michael Connelly) 11: My Real Children (Jo Walton) 12: Ancillary Justice (Ann Leckie) 13: The Goblin Emperor (Katherine Addison) 14: Ancillary Sword (Ann Leckie) 15: The Way of Kings (Brian Sanderson) 16: Words of Radiance (Brian Sanderson) 17: Revelation Space (Alastair Reynolds) 18: Redemption Ark (Alastair Reynolds) Already, I've equalled my count from last year. Some goals for this year:
That makes for an extremely full dance card.
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Jun 17, 2015 04:39
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31. Silken Prey - John Sandford A really light thriller reading. It wasn't one of his best, but not one of the worst either. Rather in the middle. 32. New Earth - Ben Bova : A really interesting, though not very realistic book. I had a lot of fun reading it, even when the things some of the characters did was rather frustrating. I can't believe that scientists would take so long to ask some key questions until the middle/end of the book, but that's fiction I suppose. 33 The Mongoliad Book 2: Various I was a little unhappy with this. The momentum from the first book falls off completely, and you end up with a bunch of positioning for about 400 pages as everybody gets ready for the final book. I plan to get around to the final book at some point, but this hasn't made me inclined to rush towards it. 34. The City - Dean Koontz. This is Koontz's unimpressive attempt to write a book like Stephen King's Revival (note they came out around the same time so it isn't intentional). It is fairly sappy, but probably better than some of the other things he has put out in the past few years. 35. The Three - Sarah Lotz: A pretty big let down. I can see what Lotz was going for, telling the story in snippets and bits, but the truth is that there isn't much story to tell. An interesting thing happens, and some less interesting things follow. Meh. 36. The Kill Room - Jeffery Deaver - Perhaps my least favorite of the Lincoln Rhyme novels. It isn't that it was bad, it just doesn't feel like any of it was breaking new ground. He could have done much better, and the twist at the end wasn't very exciting. 37. Field of Prey - John Sandford - A much more interesting Prey novel than Silken. A little bit more like the traditional Sandford serial killer stories, which are usually a bit more fun than the political conspiracy stuff, or that wacky Israel artifact plot from the Virgil Flowers novel. 38. Multiplication is for White People - Lisa Delpit As a teacher of kids who are not white, it is always interesting to see what people have to say on the subject. Delpit makes a lot of really important and interesting points about how race influences education, and what teachers think their students are capable of. 39. Red Dragon - Thomas Harris - This is the first of the Hannibal books I've ever read. I watched Silence of the Lambs on Hulu around this time and decided to give it a go. In the end, Hannibal Lecter was the least interesting thing about the novel, but I loved the rest of it. This got me to watch the Hannibal TV show, which I also love, and its amazing how well it fits with the tone and spirit of Red Dragon. 40. Double Dexter - Jeff Lindsay - The books, tell a more interesting, upbeat and fun story than the television show did. It's dark and odd and a little bit silly. It plays the whole idea of Dexter almost like a comic book, where the show tried to play it straight. 41. Hannibal - Thomas Harris - I didn't enjoy this one was much. The more information you have about Hannibal, and how his mind works, the less interesting he is. This put an end to my desire to read the other books, but the show is still quite nice. 42. Beyond the Shadows - Brent Weeks - This book was totally unbalanced. You spend the first five hundred pages watching things shift and move around, and then the massive battle that culminates the entire trilogy all happens in a very abrupt way. I was not impressed. Lots of books during this run have left me underwhelmed, which might explain my slow-down. 43. The Scarlet Gospels - Clive Barker : The prologue is brutal and vicious and amazing. Then it progressively shifts away from there one step at a time. It feels like this book is somewhat of a book about endurance and hope, as opposed to Barker revisiting his origins. Initially i was really put off by this, it wasn't the book I have been waiting years to read. With some time and perspective, I appreciate what it is and what it tries to do. It would be to your advantage to re-read some of the Harry D'Amour and Norma Paine stuff first though. 44. Tales of a Fourth Grade Nothing - Judy Blume - This might be cheating, but I read this to my young son at bed time for about a week and a half. He really loved it. I really loved it. It holds up a million times better than "The Mouse and the Motorcycle" 45. The Books of Magic - Neil Gaiman - Picked this up at a library sale. I've heard bits and pieces about it. I thought it was going to be something along the lines of a Harry Potter type thing, in which a young boy learns magic and saves the day. Lots of people have made that connection, and to The Unwritten. They are totally different. The Books of Magic is basically a tour through DC's Dark/Magical universe in the eyes of a young boy. It's an interesting way to present the information, and I'd be interested in exploring the DC Magical stuff a bit, had they not completely wiped out and erased everything. It might mean I finally sit down and read SANDMAN though. 46. Cold Cereal - Adam Rex. Adam Rex's picture books are a lot of fun, and I love them very much. This book was not a lot of fun, and I didn't love it that much. It reads like somebody's Monkey Cheese attempt at making an absurd Harry Potter. I was expecting a little bit more from the guy who wrote the book that kids movie "HOME" was based off. 47 Finders Keepers - Stephen King. If you don't look at it like a Stephen King novel, what you have is a fairly decent mystery/thriller novel. In that perspective, it's a pretty good book. The characters are interesting and the plot is fairly strong too. As a sequel to Mr. Mercedes, well, they don't even use the characters from the first book all that much. The twist at the end has me unsure about the end of this trilogy. If they play it straight and he writes another straightforward mystery/thriller I'm going to be okay with that. I wouldn't mind writing a book like this once every few years, but if he does what he hinted, it might taint the first two.
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Jun 18, 2015 01:28
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1. The Forge of God by Greg Bear 2. The Icarus Hunt by Timothy Zahn 3. Under a Graveyard Sky by John Ringo 4. To Sail a Darkling Sea by John Ringo 5. Islands of Rage and Hope by John Ringo 6. Strands of Sorrow by John Ringo 7. Is Everyone Hanging Out Without Me? by Mindy Kaling 8. Foundation by Isaac Asimov 9. Reach for Infinity edited by Jonathan Strahan 10. The Pride of Chanur by C.J. Cherryh 11. The Importance of Being Earnest by Oscar Wilde 12. The Martian by Andy Weir 13. Invisible Cities by Italo Calvino 14. The Girl With All The Gifts by M.R. Carey 15. Assassin’s Apprentice by Robin Hobb 16. A Personal Matter by Kenzaburo Oe 17. Cibola Burn by James S.a. Corey 18. Atomic Accidents: A History of Nuclear Meltdowns and Disasters: From the Ozark Mountains to Fukushima by James Mahaffey 19. The Water Knife by Paolo Bacigalupi 20. Dr. No by Ian Fleming 21. The End is Nigh edited by John Joseph Adams 22. The End is Now by John Joseph Adams 23. Monster Hunters International by Larry Correia 24. Escaping the Dead by W.J. Lundy 25. A Hanging by George Orwell 1. The vanilla read a set number of books in a year. 25/52 2. 3. 4. Philosophy 5. 6. 7. A collection of poetry 8. 9. Something absurdist 10. The Blind Owl (Free translation if your ok with reading on a screen or cant find a copy!) 11. Something on either hate or love 12. 13. 14. Wildcard (Some one else taking the challenge will tell you what to read) 15. 16. 17. 18. Biography 19. 20. Something banned or censored 21. 22. A mystery I’ve been bad at updating in this thread but have been reading quite a bit. I have some good progress on keeping up on my reading goal and the extra reading challenge so that is nice. Not going to write about every book, but just some highs and lows. Starting out with the bad, Under a Graveyard Sun and the other three books in the series. Picked it up because it was a zombie book with a different take(main characters flee to the ocean). The first book okay, then it progressively got worse. I think I’l leave it at this, 13 year old super zombie fighter who gets inducted and promoted to a Marine Corp Officer and later drives a pink tank around blaring music to draw zombies in to be killed. Her sister at 15 was at least somewhat more acceptable as a Naval captain of a small boat. Foundation was really good, I think of all the bits, the merchant princes pare was my favorite. I need to read the next two I guess. The Pride of Chanur was fun. I know there are others in the series, but even as a stand alone, it was a good story. The Importance of Being Earnest, I’ve never read a play before and this one was funny, enjoyable and a quick read. Really liked The Martian, looking forward to the movie, from what I’ve seen, they seem to capture the story well in previews. A Personal Matter was tough to get through, but in the scope of expanding my reading, I feel like it was definitely worth reading. The Water Knife was good. My first book by Paolo Bacigalupi and now I want to read his previous stuff. I picked up Dr. No and some other Bond books a few years ago on sale. And at this point I’m done reading any more. I’ve come to realize that the Bond of the books is quite incompetent. The only way he can take care of the problem is to get captured then something happens and he wins. Monster Hunters International, I picked up for free. It was okay if you just skip the gun porn sections and don’t mind being blasted with anything and everything the author can come up with. Could have used some parts cut/leave some of the mystery about the Shacklefords in.
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Jun 26, 2015 23:02
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screenwritersblues posted:6) The Marriage Plot by Jeffery Eugenides Holy no update Batman. It's been so long since I've posted an update that I totally forgot about this thread. So here's the update. 7) Welcome to Paradise, Now Go To Hell: A True Story of Violence, Corruption, and The Soul of Surfing by Chas Smith: I really had high hopes for this book. But as it turned out, it was one of those books that wasn't what I thought it was. While it did focus of surf culture in Hawaii, it got lost by jumping around and also the fact that the author was total Bro who pretty much deserved to get his rear end kicked didn't help the book either. However, the parts about surfing did save it. 4.50/5 8) The Last Pirate: A Father, His Son, and the Golden Age of Marijuana by Tony Dokoupil: A really, really great memoir about growing up not knowing what your father did for a living, but getting everything you wanted. This was probably one of my top 10 books of the year. It goes from New Jersey to Miami and makes the high of marijuana trafficing seem tame compared to what it is today. 5/5 9) Chasing the Scream: The First and Last Days of the War on Drugs by Johann Hari: A cool look into what the author calls the end of the drug war. While it goes world wide, I personally felt that if her focused on America a little more, it would have been a lot better. 4.65/5 10) Easy Street: The Hard Way by Ron Pearlman: If you like Hellboy, Sons of Anarchy or Beauty and the Beast for that matter, by all means, read this. Pearlman is the kind of guy that you want to grab a drink with so that you can hear all of his stories. My only gripe is that I wish there were more stories. 4.87/5 11) The Art of Racing in the Rain by Garth Stein: I heard about this book years ago, but could never remember the name of it to save my life. When I finally remembered the title, I grabbed it. I really enjoyed it, mainly because of the way that the book was narrated. It wasn't told from the POV of a human, but a dog. Yes, a dog is telling the story. Also, if you don't see the ending coming, then there's something wrong with you. 4.90/5 12) The Fortune Cookie Chronicles: Adventures in the World of Chinese Food by Jennifer 8. Lee: This one caught my eye when the author announced that she was doing a documentary of the same name. While the book started out strong, telling the story of a bunch of people who won the mega millions by taking the number off of a fortune cookie, it ended on a low note that it couldn't recover from. 3.50/5 13) Mosquitoland by David Arnold: It's finally good to see that YA is going away from distopia and into more realistic, relateable characters. It was a sold book, but it just felt too short. 4.60/5 14) The Devil in the White City: Murder, Magic, and Madness at the Fair That Changed America by Erik Larson: Another book I could never remember the title of, but thanks to a Facebook group that I'm involved with, they remind me about it. It was a solid read, but a little long for my liking. 4.60/5 15) The Martain by Andy Weir: Castaway in space? Yeah, pretty much. Still a solid read though. 4.85/5 16) Stranger Than Fiction by Chuck Palahniuk: I've had this once for a while now and really haven't had the chance to read it, so now that his new book, Make Something Up is out, I decided that it was time to read it. It was good, but a little strange at times. 4.95/5 16/45 Currently reading: The Beautiful Indifference by Sarah Hall: A Strand Book Store Staff pick from the events director. She says that it's one of her favorite short story collections and it was her staff pick for a while.
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Jun 28, 2015 16:45
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Mr. Squishy posted:1 One Third of a Nation by Arthur Arent and others. A play exploring the dire housing situation in depression-era New York. Agit-prop long past its sell by date but still fascinating, mostly for being in such a foreign style. (17) 28 The Day of the Locust by Nathanial West. I reread this for the first time after reading his complete works like, a decade ago. Still pretty fun. 29 Waiting for the Barbarians by J.M. Coetzee. It's basically disgrace but half the length and with a vague fantasy-setting so, uh, a categorical improvement. 30 Cat and Mouse by Günter Grass as translated by Ralph Manheim. Another later Grass as I continue to look for The Tin Drum. Beginning to suspect that Grass' political position is down entirely to his hosed-up teeth. 31 Under Western Eyes by Joseph Conrad. The more I read this the more I like it. 32 Strong as Death by Guy de Maupassant as translated by someone or other. It's an old Knopf copy, might be Ernest Augustus Boyd? The first Maupassant I've read where it doesn't ever dive headlong into filth. I mean, she burns some letters and feels as if she's burning herself, but it's no priest stomping on a bitch birthing puppies. Good despite that though. 33 At Swim Two Birds by Flan O'Brien. Now this was a lot of fun. Any one strand of this book is great, and switching between them can be a bit of a jerk as you're sorry to leave, but I guess if that's what he had to do. 8 34 Carpenter's Gothic by WIlliam Gaddis. I've got bookmarks in both JR and Frolic but I've got a bit bogged down in them. This one's still good though. Funny to read this both with the annotations AND having read Dispatches. 35 Cuckoo's Calling by Robert Gilbraith. Very readable, not good. The only thing in this book that rings true is the utter disdain for the British press. 36 The Silkworm by Robert Gilbraith. Far too long, and they keep stacking more and more ludicrous poo poo onto the detectives (one of them's a professional-grade stunt driver, apparently?). Repeats a simile likening strong tea to turpentine like it's something clever, and not what all our grans said. 37 The Silent World of Nicholas Quin by Colin Dexter. So this is what good detective fiction looks like. Better writing, much shorter, subtle clues and a clever solution. Filled with that very creepy donnish humour, and ends with Morse and Lewis jointly masturbating to a porno. 22 38 Let Us Now Honour Famous Men by James Agee. An impassioned communist/marxist attempts to hammer into your brains the physical existence of the poor. He mostly tries to do so by making a catalog of their possessions, with actual stories of their lives smuggled in through his run-on sentences. He then includes a letter he wrote to some poor magazine hack telling them to gently caress right off, for reasons unclear to me. The man's a lunatic. 14 39 The Castle of Otranto by Horace Walpole. Kinda... boring? But very short. 40 Vathek by William Beckford. The same gothic silliness as Otranto, but at least Beckford had a sense of humour in his prose style. Very strong opening paragraph and it continues throughout. That kind of excess is what I really like in fiction. 13 40/60 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22
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Jun 29, 2015 17:03
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Prolonged Shame posted:1) The Other Boleyn Girl - Philippa Gregory June was not super productive, readingwise, but I'm in the middle of three giant books, so hopefully July will be better. At least I hit my halfway mark. 49) Shelley: Poems - Percy Bysshe Shelley: I read this specifically for the Booklord challenge, as I don't generally read volumes of poetry, but rather individual poems (In fact I chose it because I love Ozymandias). It was pretty good, but none of the poems measured up to Ozymandias. Easily the best one in the book. 50) The Boleyn Inheritance - Philippa Gregory: The stories of Henry VIII's 4th and 5th wives, told from their points of view. I like how Gregory gives personality to her historical figures, but I don't always like how she gives people motives for things that happened based on absolutely nothing. 51) Cod: A Biography of the Fish that Changed the World - Mark Kurlansky: This started off really strongly. The history of the cod fishery was interesting, as was the importance of the fish in cuisine worldwide and it's importance in the slave trade. Unfortunately, he sort of ran out of steam and never really went anywhere or made any sort of point other than "cod are overfished, probably". I feel it could have benefited from an actual description of the cod themselves and an overview of their biology and habits. 52) Big Little Lies - Liane Moriarty: A total trashy beach read that ended up being way better than I anticipated. The characters were well drawn, somewhat realistic, and had understandable motivations, and the suspense she creates by not revealing the identities of the murderer or the victim of the murder builds quite nicely throughout the book. 53) Black Hawk Down - Mark Bowden: The definitive account of the 1993 Battle of Mogadishu. This is what the movie was based on. It took some effort to get into it, as there were tons of different points of view, but once I had a basic Idea of who was who, it was fantastic. 54) FDR - Jean Edward Smith: Loved this. It was a fantastic biography that read like a novel. It gives a very good sense of FDR's personality and balances the list of his accomplishments and failures with some behind the scenes private life information. Total: 54/100 Presidential bios: 6/12 Non Fiction barring prez bios: 12/25 Stravinsky's Challenge: 1. The vanilla read a set number of books in a year. 54/100 2. Read a female author - The Other Boleyn Girl - Philippa Gregory 3. The non-white author - Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass - Frederick Douglass 4. Philosophy - The Art of War - Sun Tzu 5. History - In the Heart of the Sea: the Tragedy of the Whaleship Essex - Nathaniel Philbrick 6. An essay - The Best of Edward Abbey - Edward Abbey 7. A collection of poetry - Shelley: Poems - Percy Bysshe Shelley 9. Something absurdist - Perfume: The Story of a Murderer - Patrick Süskind 10. The Blind Owl - The Blind Owl - Sadegh Hedayat 11. Something on either hate or love - Arabella - Georgette Heyer 12. Something dealing with space - Foundation - Isaac Asimov 13. Something dealing with the unreal - The Well of Ascension - Brandon Sanderson 15. Something published this year - Shadow Scale - Rachel Hartman 16. That one book that has been sitting on your desk waiting for a long time - Giant's Bread - Mary Westmacott 17. A play - Steel Magnolias - Robert Harling 18. Biography - William Howard Taft: The Travails of a Progressive Conservative - Jonathan Lurie 19. The color red - A Spy Among Friends: Kim Philby and the Great Betrayal - Robert Macintyre 20. Something banned or censored - The Giver - Lois Lowry 21. Short story(s) - Lost in the City - Edward P. Jones 22. A mystery - The Maltese Falcon - Dashiell Hammet
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Jun 29, 2015 17:53
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thespaceinvader posted:1: Cryptonomicon by Neal Stephenson Next up is Gone Girl. In a rare move for me I am reading the book after watching the film. I have two more from the same author cued up afterwards if I get on with it. If not, eh, the whole set was a fiver when the Book People came into work.
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Jun 29, 2015 19:53
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Since my last update I've read some comics, but also: Margaret Atwood - Maddaddam George Macdonald Fraser - Black Ajax Nick Cutter - The Acolyte Black Ajax was my wildcard, and it took me 3 months to read. Yeesh. Here's my progress on the Booklord challenge: 1. The vanilla read a set number of books in a year. (Currently at 28/35) 2. 3. 4. Philosophy 5. History 6. 7. 8. 9. Something absurdist 10. 11. 12. 13. 14. 15. 16. That one book that has been sitting on your desk waiting for a long time 17. 18. 19. 20. Something banned or censored 21. Short story(s) 22. A mystery My goal last month was to finish my wildcard and the Maddaddam trilogy, and I did, which is great. This month I want to knock off a couple more challenges, maybe #16 and #20.
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Jun 29, 2015 22:35
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June! 56. Dragonfly in Amber (Outlander #2) - Diana Gabaldon 57. Dark Force Rising (Thrawn #2) - Timothy Zahn 58. The Professor and the Madman - Simon Winchester 59. Little Dorrit - Charles Dickens 60. To the Lighthouse - Virginia Woolf 61. The Last Command (Thrawn #3) - Timothy Zahn 62. Red Plenty - Francis Spufford 63. Americanah - Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie This month was a little less overflowing with wonderful books, but I still found plenty to love. To the Lighthouse was my first - and still favorite - Virginia Woolf novel, and reading it again just reminds me of how beautiful and brilliant it is. That dinner party scene is a masterwork. Little Dorrit had your classic Dickens plot - orphans, secret inheritances, debtor's prisons, and the whole shebang - but some of his most inspired writing. (Or some of his most wordy and convoluted, depending on how you feel about Dickens.) Red Plenty was really interesting, as it took a semi-fictional look at the lives of Russians during the USSR's dreams of becoming the world's greatest communist superpower, able to provide for its people and shame the capitalist U.S. Also good were Americanah, about Nigerian immigrants to the U.S. and U.K., and The Professor and the Madman, about the mentally ill murderer who helped put together the Oxford English Dictionary. The Timothy Zahn books were pure cheese but occasionally summoned up the spirit of fun of the original movies, and Dragonfly in Amber was a concession to my lovely wife, who loves those Outlander books a great deal. (They're not precisely my cup of tea, but they're well-written enough and we'd just finished watching the first season of the show.) BOOKLORD CHALLENGE 1. The vanilla read a set number of books in a year.: 63, out of.... I dunno, 100? 2. Read a female author: 12 (Gabaldon, Woolf, and Adichie) 3. The non-white author: Adichie 4. 5. 6. 7. A collection of poetry 8. 9. Something absurdist 10. The Blind Owl 11. 12. 13. 14. Wildcard (Some one else taking the challenge will tell you what to read) 15. 16. 17. A play 18. Biography 19. The color red: Red Plenty 20. 21. 22. I still need to get to the Wildcard (Planet of the Apes) that someone recommended to me, but what I'm really stuck on is the absurdist book. Any suggestions for an absurdist book I might read?
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Jun 30, 2015 03:10
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Four this month: 22. Mort (Terry Pratchett) 23. Schlump (Hans Herbert Grimm) 24. Concrete (Thomas Bernhard) 25. The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich (William L. Shirer) Mort was part of my ongoing full Discworld reread. It's the first one that feels like what the I think of when I think of the series and it's the first Death book which is nice. Schlump I came across in a bookshop in Wimborne while I was away for work. It's an anti-war novel from the interwar period, the only one the author ever wrote, about how much being a German soldier in WW1 sucked. It was published anonymously and no-one knew who wrote it until 2013, which didn't stop the Nazis from banning it and burning it during the 30s. It reminded me a of the Good Soldier Svejk which had similar themes. It's a very funny book in places, and Schlump approaches everything in a way which is basically positive, which juxtaposes nicely with the relatively brief time he ends up in the nightmare of the trenches. Concrete was my wildcard. It's 156 continuous pages (no chapters, no paragraphs) of ranting by the author, a Viennese musicologist, about how much he hates his sister, his house, Austria, and his neighbours, and how much he wants to start writing a book on Mendelssohn. It's a fascinating look at a deeply weird individual. The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich was an amazingly indepth look at how the Third Reich came about. It's very centred around Hitler - the other key figures in the Nazi Party are brought up and covered in depth where necessary but it's very much Hitler's story. Somehow at 1143 pages it still feels like it didn't touch on everything as deeply as it could have, but it's such a huge period to cover that that's inevitable and as a general history of Nazi Germany it's great. It's a little limited by its age - it was published in 1960 so, for example, there's a footnote about Eichmann's abduction from Argentina saying "this happened right as we went to press" and it doesn't cover a couple of things like Enigma which only came to light later on and, for some reason, Mengele is completely excluded despite there being a quite long section on all the weird medical experiments the Nazis did. It's also super homophobic when discussing Roehm and the early Nazi party. Still, it deserves attention for its sheer scope and ambition in covering an enormous area. Year to Date: 25 01. The Establishment: And how they get away with it (Owen Jones) 02. Mussolini and Fascist Italy (Martin Blinkhorn) 03. Love in the Time of Cholera (Gabriel Garcia Marquez) 04. All You Need is Kill (Hiroshi Sakurazaka) 05. Theft: A Love Story (Peter Carey) 06. Stalin (Kevin McDermott) 07. Heart of Darkness (Joseph Conrad) 08. Revenge (Yoko Ogawa) 09. The Good Soldier Svejk and his Fortunes in the Great War (Jaroslav Hasek) 10. The Buried Giant (Kazuo Ishiguro) 11. after the quake (Haruki Murakami) 12. The Colour of Magic (Terry Pratchett) 13. The Light Fantastic (Terry Pratchett) 14. The Girls of Room 28: Friendship, Hope and Survival in Theresienstadt (Hannelore Brenner) 15. Equal Rites (Terry Pratchett) 16. Invisible Cities (Italo Calvino) 17. Iron Curtain: The Crushing of Eastern Europe 1944-1956 (Anne Applebaum) 18. Running with the Kenyans (Adharanand Finn) 19. Notes from Underground and The Double (Fyodor Dostoyevsky) 20. First Novel (Nicholas Royle) 21. The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao (Junot Diaz) 22. Mort (Terry Pratchett) 23. Schlump (Hans Herbert Grimm) 24. Concrete (Thomas Bernhard) 25. The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich (William L. Shirer) Booklord categories: 2, 3, 5, 6, 8, 9, 11, 13, 14, 15, 18, 19, 20, 21, 22.
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Jun 30, 2015 11:44
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