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Lumius posted:It was good, real good. I am happy you enjoyed it!
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Jul 28, 2015 03:37
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My latest three: Ancillary Justice, Ancillary Sword, and Rosemary's Baby. Will probably update this post with thoughts later. Have fallen a bit behind on booklording.
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Jul 28, 2015 13:41
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I've been reading a collection of Chekov's plays during these awful hot summer nights. The (somewhat similar!) ending of Ivanov and The Seagull was uh interesting. I sort of hope all his plays end in the exact same way.
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Jul 28, 2015 19:58
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So there's about 5 months left and I have like half the challenges left and a few books left for my own personal challenges. That's easily doable but I have gotten serious about planning this poo poo out since I need to put in holds at the library. I've gotten some good recommendations for absurdism, philosophy, and plays from within the bowels of the thread. The last few I'm thinking through are "unreal" and "hate or love" and I am wondering if people could explain their reasoning behind their choices, just to see if I could get some inspiration. It seems like a lot of "unreal" picks are sf/fantasy or magic realism where bizarre poo poo happens. Likewise "hate or love" can easily default to a love story which are a dime a dozen, although I saw The Berzerker chose a book about the science of annoyance which is pretty cool. Also I am not bashing anyone who went with just a straightforward pick, just seeing if anyone had any special reason for choosing a book in that category and seeing if I could get some inspiration for myself.
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Jul 28, 2015 23:44
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I kinda just checked those two challenges as I went along. I never really planned ahead for them, but added a book I've read if I thought it fit the theme.
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Jul 29, 2015 09:20
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It's the colour red that has me worried (that Stavinsky will track me down and beat me up for failing the challenge)
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Jul 29, 2015 18:51
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I'm thinking of going the incredibly obvious path and see if I can't find a book that has some sort of backdrop of communism in it, but not have the word "red" anywhere in the title.
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Jul 29, 2015 19:41
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Read Iron Curtain: The Crushing of Eastern Europe. The Red Army is mentioned about every other page and that was good enough for me.
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Jul 29, 2015 22:00
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Mr. Squishy posted:It's the colour red that has me worried (that Stavinsky will track me down and beat me up for failing the challenge) Stravinsky will only track you down if this is your choice for the colour red, otherwise you're free to interpret the prompt as you wish.
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Jul 29, 2015 22:02
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Corrode posted:Read Iron Curtain: The Crushing of Eastern Europe. The Red Army is mentioned about every other page and that was good enough for me. interesting suggestion. That'll check my history challenge too. Though I'd probably seek out something less politically biased. ulvir fucked around with this message at 22:32 on Jul 29, 2015 |
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Jul 29, 2015 22:29
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Mr. Squishy posted:It's the colour red that has me worried (that Stavinsky will track me down and beat me up for failing the challenge) Read Jung's Red Book
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Jul 29, 2015 22:51
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I am reading Farewell to Matyora for the love/hate category. It is a book ridden with nostalgia and missing the simple village life (a love for it that resides particular in childhood) but at the same time does not glamorizes it. I thought it would end up being nothing but pastoralism but it definitely does not.
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Jul 29, 2015 23:15
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There is a right and wrong way to fulfill the red category. But I'm not telling and will destroy you if you get it wrong. 
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Jul 29, 2015 23:17
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Read Babyfucker by Urs Allemann for love/hate.
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Jul 29, 2015 23:25
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Corrode posted:Read Iron Curtain: The Crushing of Eastern Europe. The Red Army is mentioned about every other page and that was good enough for me. Don't read books by right wing propagandists.
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Jul 30, 2015 00:21
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My Name is Red is the one I'll be reading. Looks pretty interesting.
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Jul 30, 2015 04:14
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Is it possible to fulfill the challenge only with warhammer/star wars books? Except blind owl, obv.
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Jul 30, 2015 06:17
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A human heart posted:Don't read books by right wing propagandists. Or do and just be aware of the bias? It's not like she's David Irving.
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Jul 30, 2015 07:35
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Burning Rain posted:Is it possible to fulfill the challenge only with warhammer/star wars books? Except blind owl, obv. yes, but do you find reading those books challenging? dis is a challenge list
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Jul 30, 2015 14:51
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I kinda went down a Marvel comics rabbit hole this month, and I'm not counting comics or graphic novels towards my challenge, so not a lot of progress. But besides comics, I also read the following in July: Ray Bradbury - Fahrenheit 451 Heather O'Neill - Daydreams of Angels I'm using Fahrenheit 451 as my banned/censored book, and the other is my collection of short stories. Here's my progress on the Booklord challenge: 1. The vanilla read a set number of books in a year. (Currently at 30/35) 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. 21. 22. A mystery I'm now tackling challenge 16. I've had Legs McNeil's "Please Kill Me" on my shelf for years and have never cracked it open so I just started that. Guy A. Person posted:Likewise "hate or love" can easily default to a love story which are a dime a dozen, although I saw The Berzerker chose a book about the science of annoyance which is pretty cool. Mr. Squishy posted:It's the colour red that has me worried (that Stavinsky will track me down and beat me up for failing the challenge) I've tried to go a little outside the box on some of the challenges, like my love/hate challenge. For the color red, I read a book on color theory, which is probably the most literal interpretation I could think of but it was more interesting to me than reading the Scarlet Letter or something about communism.
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Jul 30, 2015 16:14
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July - 7: 26. The Last Kingdom (Bernard Cornwell) 27. The Pale Horseman (Bernard Cornwell) 28. Beauty and Sadness (Yasunari Kawabata) 29. The Blind Owl (Sadegh Hedayat) 30. The Lords of the North (Bernard Cornwell) 31. Sophie's World (Jostein Gaarder) 32. The Hundred Year Old Man Who Climbed Out of the Window and Disappeared (Jonas Jonasson) The three Bernard Cornwells are part of the Saxon Stories thing he's been doing lately, about the Danish invasion of Britain and King Alfred's Wessex. I haven't read a ton of Cornwell before (Azincourt and his Arthur series) but I picked up some of these for 99p out of a charity shop and the rest my sister bought me so whatever. They delivered basically what I expected, which is fun macho early-Mediaeval adventure stories. Low on brains, high on Germanic dudes chopping the poo poo out of each other, which was a welcome intellectual break after 1100 pages of der Fuehrer. One thing though - holy poo poo does he love rape. I can't remember if this was the case with the other stuff of his I read, but these are absolutely chock full of rape. Sure, it's appropriate to the times and a fair reflection of what Dark Ages raiding and conquest would have been like, but it manages to be both constant and also treated amazingly lightly (the second book is the worst, where the main character finds a whore he knows in a tavern being gang raped and chases the Danes off, and she just sits up and goes "Oh I'm so sore!" then it's never mentioned again). It's a bit of a weird note in what are otherwise pretty standard heroic historical fiction books. After all that Beauty and Sadness was much deeper. I'd never heard of Kawabata until my girlfriend spotted this on an Amazon related search thing, so apparently targeted advertising does work because I loved it. One of those slim books where I figured I'd pace myself and savour it then read the whole thing in about two hours because I didn't want to put it down. I followed that up with The Blind Owl for the challenge. I think the best thing I can say about it is that I can't forget it and I find myself thinking about it even though it's been weeks since I read it now. I was really into the repeated imagery and the dreamlike feel of it all - it reminded me of Narcopolis which I read last year, which is similarly about opium addiction among people who are or feel they are outcast from society, and has that same kind of circular narrative. I would never have read it without the challenge so cheers Stravinsky I guess! Sophie's World was another one that I read for the booklord thing for the philosophy component. It's YA as all hell but it's very interesting and was actually pretty good as a philosophy 101 (which is after all the point). I probably wouldn't read it again, but I'd give it to my future kid when they're old enough to get something out of it. The meta-narrative was surprisingly fun too and not at all what I expected it to be. The Hundred Year Old Man was a book I bought for my girlfriend when we started going out which she loved so I read it too. It's very funny and sweet and the main character's uncritical and open-minded approach to the world is refreshing to read about. It did also make me want to drop everything and travel the world but sadly I don't think I'd end up running into and befriending a bunch of world leaders who can coincidentally bail me out of whatever bullshit I'd fallen into, so it wouldn't work out so well. 7 books this month was pretty good going after not really motoring through it previously this year. I ticked off two more for the challenge and got to read a few things I was really looking forward to, so that all worked out well. Next up some poetry I think (probably the bit of this I want to do the least). Year to Date: 32 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) 26. The Last Kingdom (Bernard Cornwell) 27. The Pale Horseman (Bernard Cornwell) 28. Beauty and Sadness (Yasunari Kawabata) 29. The Blind Owl (Sadegh Hedayat) 30. The Lords of the North (Bernard Cornwell) 31. Sophie's World (Jostein Gaarder) 32. The Hundred Year Old Man Who Climbed Out of the Window and Disappeared (Jonas Jonasson) Booklord categories: 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 8, 9, 10, 11, 13, 14, 15, 18, 19, 20, 21, 22.
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Jul 31, 2015 09:07
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The Year So Far... 1) Ghostwritten by David Mitchell 2) Candy Girl: A Year in the Life of an Unlikely Stripper by Diablo Cody* 3) The Dark Defiles by Richard K Morgan 4) Off Season by Jack Ketchum* 5) The 39 Steps by John Buchan* 6) The Snow Child by Eowyn Ivey* 7) Feed by Mira Grant* 8) Old Man's War by John Scalzi* 9) The Narrow Road to the Deep North by Richard Flanagan* 10) Pale Fire by Vladimir Nabokov* 11) Pronto by Elmore Leonard* 12) Brothers by William Goldman* 13) Flashman and the Tiger by George MacDonald Fraser 14) Go Tell It on the Mountain by James Baldwin* 15) An Act of Courage by Allan Mallinson 16) Superman: Secret Identity by Kurt Busiek* 17) Fly Away Peter by David Malouf* 18) The Atrocity Archives by Charles Stross* 19) Use of Weapons by Iain M Banks* 20) The Left Hand of Darkness by Ursula K. LeGuin 21) Trouble is My Business by Raymond Chandler* 22) Sharpe's Sword by Bernard Cornwell 23) Ms. Marvel, Vol. 1: No Normal by G. Willow Wilson* 24) Devil in a Blue Dress by Walter Mosley* 25) A Model World and Other Stories by Michael Chabon* 26) By Grand Central Station I Sat Down and Wept by Elizabeth Smart* 27) The Gap Into Conflict: The Real Story by Stephen Donaldson* 28) The Prince by Machiavelli* 29) The First Person and Other Stories by Ali Smith 30) The Scorpio Races by Maggie Stiefvater* 31) Ms. Marvel, Vol. 2: Generation Why by G. Willow Wilson 32) First Love, Last Rites by Ian McEwan* 33) Teaching Critical Thinking: Practical Wisdom by Bell Hooks* 34) Ancillary Justice by Ann Leckie* 35) Close Quarters by William Golding 36) At the Mouth of the River of Bees by Kij Johnson* 37) Everything I Never Told You by Celeste Ng* 38) Fevre Dream by George R.R. Martin 39) The Sandman, Vol. 1: Preludes and Nocturnes by Neil Gaiman 40) The Sandman, Vol. 2: The Doll's House by Neil Gaiman 41) The Sandman, Vol. 3: Dream Country by Neil Gaiman 42) The Sandman, Vol. 4: Season of Mists by Neil Gaiman 43) The Sandman, Vol. 5: A Game of You by Neil Gaiman 44) The Sandman, Vol. 6: Fables and Reflections by Neil Gaiman 45) Nightworld by F Paul Wilson* 46) The Children of Men by PD James 47) The Things They Carried by Tim O'Brien* 48) The Scarlet Pimpernel by Baroness Emmuska Orczy* 49) Something Wicked This Way Comes by Ray Bradbury 50) The Luminaries by Eleanor Catton* 51) Code Name Verity by Elizabeth Wein* Booklord Challenge Bingo 1. The vanilla read a set number of books in a year (34/52 authors not read before - indicated by asterix). 2. Read a female author (17) 3. The non-white author (4) 4. Philosophy (Machiavelli) 5. History 6. An essay (Hooks - a collection) 7. A collection of poetry 8. Something post-modern (Pale Fire) 9. Something absurdist 10. The Blind Owl 11. Something on either hate or love (The Narrow Road to Deep North) 12. Something dealing with space (Use of Weapons) 13. Something dealing with the unreal (Something Wicked This Way Comes) 14. Wildcard (I need one!) 15. Something published this year or the past three months (The Dark Defiles) 16. That one book that has been sitting on your desk waiting for a long time (The Luminaries) 17. A play 18. Biography 19. The colour red (The Scarlet Pimpernel) 20. Something banned or censored 21. Short story (4 collections - Chabon, Smith, Johnson, McEwan) 22. A mystery (Trouble is My Business) High Warlord Zog fucked around with this message at 11:12 on Sep 9, 2015 |
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Jul 31, 2015 10:01
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High Warlord Zog posted:14. Wildcard (I need one!) Read The Dark Room by Rachel Seiffert.
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Jul 31, 2015 10:24
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July update. 1. The vanilla read a set number of books in a year. - 31/40 4. Philosophy - Either Derrida or Spinoza 5. History 6. An essay - 9. Something absurdist - Waiting for Godot 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 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 25. Confusion of Feelings, Stefan Zweig 26. The Lost Honour of Katharina Blum, Heinrich Böll 27. The Elephant's Jurney, José Saramago 28. Shyness and Dignity, Dag Solstad 29. Krysantemum, Rune Christiansen 30. The Feast of the Goat, Mario Vargas Llosa 31. Between the World and Me, Ta-Nehisi Coates 31/40 A new round of pretty introspective novels this time around as well. The two Norwegian novels, written 15 years apart, follows a kind of similar theme though with a different plot and setting. In Shyness and Dignity, we follow an upper secondary school teacher. After an incident in the school yard where he snaps and loses his temper, he begins to contemplate his life, his position vis-á-vis society, and both how and why he has the kind of relationship with his wife that he has. In Krysantemum the story is centred around Agnes Løv, who has moved to Basel to finish her doctorate thesis on Alfred de Vigny. Here, too, the protagonist spends a lot of time reflecting both on her own life, both past and present, and especially her relationship with her father. Between the World and Me was interesting in that it gave an incredibly personal and intimate view on racial relations in the US. A perspective that I as a white European had no prerequisites to actually understand on beforehand. What stuck with me most, I think, was the part about his very first trip to Paris, and how he was so taken aback by how different the "reality" was there versus back home in Baltimore. The Feast of the Goat centres around the assasination of Rafael Trujillo, former dictator of the Dominican republic. The novel constantly changes perspectives throughout the book, between the people conspiring to murder him, El Jefe himself, and the political game that arose after his death. It wasn't the most brilliant book, but it had some really interesting parts here and there. ulvir fucked around with this message at 10:43 on Jul 31, 2015 |
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Jul 31, 2015 10:37
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Guy A. Person posted:I've gotten some good recommendations for absurdism, philosophy, and plays from within the bowels of the thread. The last few I'm thinking through are "unreal" and "hate or love" and I am wondering if people could explain their reasoning behind their choices, just to see if I could get some inspiration. It seems like a lot of "unreal" picks are sf/fantasy or magic realism where bizarre poo poo happens. Likewise "hate or love" can easily default to a love story which are a dime a dozen, although I saw The Berzerker chose a book about the science of annoyance which is pretty cool. I generally just read a book I was planning to read anyways and then look at what categories it would check off; if I'm trying to decide what to read next I'll use that as a tiebreaker. For those specifically, I picked More Than Two for Hate/Love (it's a book about polyamorous relationships, so the connection is pretty obvious). For Unreal, I felt like counting fantasy or SF would be kind of a cop-out, because the stuff those books are writing about is real within the setting of the book. Instead I went with The Demon-Haunted World, which is largely about superstitions and pseudoscience -- belief in things that aren't real, and unreal explanations for things that are. ulvir posted:I'm thinking of going the incredibly obvious path and see if I can't find a book that has some sort of backdrop of communism in it, but not have the word "red" anywhere in the title. I'm counting Rockets and People as my Red book. And I'm almost done volume 4, so my monthly update will probably be sometime this weekend. After that I think I need some very light reading. Maybe I'll finally read the entire David Starr, Space Ranger series by Asimov -- I had some of the books when I was growing up, but I was missing the first and last ones.
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Jul 31, 2015 15:34
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Prolonged Shame posted:1) The Other Boleyn Girl - Philippa Gregory July: 55) The Running Man - Stephen King: This was pretty good. I like King more when he's brief and the weird dialects he gives his characters have less time to get on my nerves. It's a little dated but a fun read. 56) Orange is the New Black - Piper Kerman: This was better than I expected it to be. An interesting peek into a federal women's prison and the people affected by the war on drugs. 57) A Brief History of Seven Killings - Marlon James: This was my wildcard for the Booklord Challenge. It took me forever to get into, but I found myself enjoying it by the end. I never really got a handle on all of the character points of view, though I feel like an expert in Jamaican swear words now. 58) The Mists of Avalon - Marion Zimmer Bradley: Loved this. Arthurian legend told from the female characters points of view. Very good. 59) Wild: From Lost to Found on the Pacific Crest Trail - Cheryl Strayed: The parts of this book where she talks about actually hiking the trail were fantastic. The parts where she goes on and on about her life story prior to hiking the trail were not so great. It would have been better if some of the life history had been culled. Total: 59/100 Presidential bios: 6/12 Non Fiction barring prez bios: 14/25 Stravinsky's Challenge: 1. The vanilla read a set number of books in a year. 59/100 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 14. Wildcard - A Brief History of Seven Killings - Marlon James 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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Jul 31, 2015 16:36
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thespaceinvader posted:1: Cryptonomicon by Neal Stephenson Hairy London: what the poo poo did I just read? This book was utterly bizarre. I liked quite a lot about it - the names were really evocative of the period, which I loved, and the action really popped along... but overall it just felt a little too rushed and a little too surreal for my taste. The story didn't ever really have time to develop because it just ploughed right on to the next weird historical in-joke or hair joke or whatever. It was fun but didn't impress me enough to pick up anything else by the author.
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Jul 31, 2015 18:23
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Ursus Veritas posted:January June 12. After the Golden Age (Golden Age #1) by Carrie Vaughn 13. Vicious by V.E. Schwab July 14. Blackbirds (Miriam Black #1) by Chuck Wendig 15. In the Woods(Dublin Murder Squad #1) by Tana French 16. Throne of Glass (Throne of Glass #1) by Sarah J. Maas After the Golden Age was okay, basic premise is how the child of Superhero deals with having no superpowers of their own. Decently written, but the plot was very predictable. Still it scratched my Superhero fiction itch for a little while. Vicious was fantastic, easily my favourite book of the year thus far. It's another Superhero story but this one is about dueling best friends turned Supervillians and I just loved it, easily the best piece of Superhero fiction I've managed to read. Blackbirds is a roadtrip urban fantasy, it toes the line of trying too hard to be gritty / super dark very well. Very much an introductory story though, not a lot of the universe is explained or really examined. In the Woods was loving awful. The writing was fine, but the ending is garbage and left me feeling unsatisfied and like I wasted my time. Throne of Glass is a novel for teenage girls that I read because I was bored. Nothing really special but still a fun read. I'm always surprised about what it's okay to write about in Young Adult books (in this case it's torture and references to rape) but what do I know? I was watching slasher flicks when I was seven. Currently reading The Water Knife but it's not really doing anything for me, might drop it and read Aurora since the Sci-Fi / Fantasy thread is raving about it.
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Aug 1, 2015 02:37
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quote:1. Phoenix (Vlad Taltos #5) Steven Brust I have slightly different reviews on my Goodreads. Some are longer or shorter or say different things depending on my mood when I wrote them. 32 of 80 books complete. 30. Words of Radiance (The Stormlight Archive #2) by Brandon Sanderson - I got this bookt the week it came out and started reading it immediately. Then, I put it down 16 chapters in and didn't touch it until now, so that I could finally finish this wonderful book. It was really good, and I'm glad that I was finally able to get through it. It's sad that I'll have to wait until at least next fall or even later for the next one to come out, but it will be worth it. 31. Prince of Thorns (The Broken Empire #1) by Mark Lawrence - A book that I'd started and stopped a couple of times before I finally finished it. It had its moments of being good and bad, but in general it was really kind of bland. It's some type of Fantasy - Post-apocalyptic setting and it just feels like it could have been much more than what it ended up being. I also can't take the characters seriously when they all follow the 13 year old main character out of fear when they're all grown men who've been killing others for years. I don't know if I'll get around to the later books in this series. 32. Stalking Darkness (Nightrunner #2) by Lynn Flewelling - I like the plot in these books. I also like the characters in general. I like how they tend to grow. The first book was great. This book is also really good, though it ends on a pretty down note. Even with that, I'm probably not going to read any more books in this series. I started reading the next book, and pretty much all the 2 main characters think about at the beginning is how much and where they've had sex during this last year. I don't give a gently caress about how much sex you've been having and where. It doesn't matter what type of relationship it is, you don't have to keep talking about it the entire time. Also, there is a bit to much predestination, though I don't mind that too much when it's well written. 1. The vanilla read a set number of books in a year. 32 of 50 2. Read a female author - Luck in the Shadows Lynn Flewelling 3. The non-white author 4. Philosophy 5. History 6. An essay - Signs of Life Sonia Maasik, Jack Solomon 7. A collection of poetry 8. Something post-modern - Will probably be Cloud Atlas 9. Something absurdist - The Stranger Albert Cadmus 10. The Blind Owl 11. Something on either hate or love 12. Something dealing with space 13. Something dealing with the unreal 14. Wildcard - Mother Night by Kurt Vonnegut 15. Something published this year or the past three months - Firefight Brandon Sanderson 16. That one book that has been sitting on your desk waiting for a long time - Words of Radiance by Brandon Sanderson 17. A play 18. Biography 19. The color red 20. Something banned or censored 21. Short story(s) 22. A mystery I ended up going a couple/few months without reading anything, so now I am a bit behind. I'm sure I'll catch up and be able to reach my challenge goal, but I find it easier to read when it causes me to procrastinate my school work. With school starting up again late next month, we'll see what happens. I'm also in the middle of far too many books, and I don't know if I want to go finish those ones or start new ones.
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Aug 1, 2015 05:12
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July! 64. Fourth of July Creek - Smith Henderson 65. Death Masks (Dresden Files #5) - Jim Butcher 66. A Brief History of Seven Killings - Marlon James 67. The God of Small Things - Arundhati Roy 68. The Public Burning - Robert Coover 69. The Witches - Roald Dahl 70. The Deep - John Crowley 71. Go Down, Moses - William Faulkner 72. The Post-Office Girl - Stefan Zweig 73. Fool - Christopher Moore Though I haven't really dug into my remaining booklord challenge books, I read some drat good books this month. Fourth of July Creek and A Brief History of Seven Killings were books released last year, and I feel like they both snuck under the radar for me. Fourth of July Creek felt like something by a more accessible Faulkner or McCarthy - the cadence of the language reminded me of them, at least, sometimes - and follows a 1980s social worker who gets wrapped up with a violent off-the-grid survivalist waiting for the end of days. Brief History of Seven Killings was - ironically - a sprawling narrative about the gang world of Jamaica from the late 60s to the 90s, focusing first on the failed assassination attempt on Bob Marley in 1976. The story is told by a variety of people who were around or pivotal to the assassination attempt, including journalists, gang dons, and a deceased narrator who follows the mayhem from beyond death. Also, there are a lot of cool Jamaican cusses that I learned, as well. The God of Small Things was possibly one of the most beautifully written books I've read this year, and follows a twisted family through some truly awful events in the 1960s in India. It reminded me a great deal of Midnight's Children and 100 Years of Solitude, only without the magic - everything is, for the most part, realistic. Go Down, Moses is Faulkner at his bitter, dusty best, following an even more twisted family tree through a Reconstruction-era South. The Public Burning is a ridiculous, overblown, over-long book about the execution of the Rosenbergs in 1953. Told mostly by a nebbish, luckless Richard Nixon, it examines the American psyche at the time and presents it as a blustering, terrifying Uncle Sam figure that speaks like the apotheosis of American hubris - always fighting the Phantom, his nemesis from the East. Sometimes ridiculous, sometimes hilarious, it was definitely absurd, so that's my pick for #9. Beyond that, Death Masks was the most enjoyable Dresden Files I've read yet, and I bought the next two books. The Witches was a reread of a childhood favorite, and it was just as macabre and brilliant as I remember. Fool was your typical Christopher Moore book - bawdy, cheesy, and eager to tweak the nose of the classics. (He reminds me of a horny American Terry Pratchett.) 1. The vanilla read a set number of books in a year.: 73/100 2. Read a female author: 13 (Roy) 3. The non-white author: (Roy, James) 4. 5. 6. 7. A collection of poetry 8. 9. Something absurdist: The Public Burning 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. 20. 21. 22.
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Aug 2, 2015 02:48
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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) 41 The Coup by John Updike. I thought it would be interesting to see Updike struggle with both race and politics. The standard egomaniac monologist is this time the dictator of an African dictator, as he tracks across his country in mufti, when he's not been spirited by a black Mercedes to his palace to talk to one of his wives. It's pretty bizzarre. Besides more expected Updikeisms (it's not ten pages before he suggests that the many women the previous ruler murdered were asking for it) he lets his imagination go wild in a way he never does in his American books. The KGB retrofit a severed head to act as an animatronic dispensing propaganda. Pretty fun. 42 Boss by Mike Royko. A philippic against Richard Daley, former mayor of Chicago and, to hear Royko tell it, a monomaniacal monster with a naked love of power that he excises by innumerable opaque wheezes. It starts out strange how much Royko hates Chicago politics but when it gets to the race riots his rage became more comprehensible to me. 43 A Burnt Out Case by Graham Greene. A depressed architecht accidentally acts exactly like a saint, despite being so bored of this whole morality thing. A better depiction of a saint than The End of the Affair where it's truly unbelievable, but maybe not the most interesting thing to read? 44 The Aleph and Other Stories by Jorge Luis Borges as translated by Andre Hurley. It's Borges, lots of tiby stories about labyrynths, alternate dimensions and cowboys stabbing each other. To be honest by the 50th 2-page story they all sort of blend into one. Has The Wait in it, where a chap opts to snooze through an assassination attempt, which was pointed out as one of the best by something I read ages ago. Since I've been meaning to read this for like a decade I'll say this was 16 45 Naked Lunch by William Burroughs. I decideed to take this back down off the shelf. It's kind of embarassing how much he idolized organized crime, but it's all in good fun. 20 Pretty bad month for reading but I suppose it can't be helped. 45/60 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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Aug 2, 2015 11:31
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July. 36. Crime and Punishment. Fyodor Dostoyevsky. I didn't know why I couldn't finish it before, I should've done that a while ago. Now I can easily say it's one of my favorites. Yes, Dostoyevsky likes to ramble, but it's still good. 37. Monsters and Demons. Charlotte Montague. Only an easy intro to the themes. 38. Red 1-2-3. John Katzenbach. It was very meh, I was promised a psychological thriller and got some kind of weird Red Riding Hood fan-fiction with plain characters and a somewhat interesting story that never goes beyond the mediocre. 39. Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets. J.K. Rowling. I feel like I already read this in the first book. Regular. 40. The Martian. Andy Weir. The story is interesting but all the train of facts got boring. Very predictable too, but still enjoyable for some reason. 41. The Wee Free Men. Terry Pratchett. Pretty good, even if you can tell the target audience, that works great with the story and the characters. 42. The Wendigo. Algernon Blackwood . Good story, but kind of hard to read. The descriptions are amazing. 43. Xenocide. Orson Scott Card. Good book, but kind of plain. It felt like every single character was trying to make think like them by telling me exactly what they were thinking at all points with their weird philosophies. 44. The Fortress of the Pearl. Michael Moorcock. Regular, the story is pretty good but the book turn kind of tedious at some points. 1. The vanilla read a set number of books in a year: 44/60 2. Read a female author: Jojo Moyes and others. 3. The non-white author: Khaled Hosseini and others. 4. Philosophy 5. History: Monsters and Demons, Charlotte Montague. 6. An essay: Unless It Moves the Human Heart: The Craft and Art of Writing, Roger Rosenblatt. 7. A collection of poetry 8. Something post-modern 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. Something dealing with space: Transition, Iain M. Banks. 13. Something dealing with the unreal: Los mentales, Pgarcía. 14. Wildcard (Some one else taking the challenge will tell you what to read) 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: Harry Potter and the Magician's Stone,J.K. Rowling. 17. A play 18. Biography 19. The color red: Red 1-2-3, John Katzenbach. 20. Something banned or censored 21. Short story(s) 22. A mystery Discworld challenge 30/41
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Aug 2, 2015 18:15
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June + July in one post, and only four books. Rockets and People murdered me. I'm only three days into August and I've already read another four books, though, so things should pick up again. Booklord Challenge Update posted:1. 58/96 books read; 13 nonfiction (22%), 19 rereads (33%) 55. Rockets and People, Volume 2: Creating a Rocket Industry by Boris Chertok 56. Rockets and People, Volume 3: Hot Days of the Cold War by Boris Chertok These, for me, are where the meat is. Volume 1 was interesting, but these two volumes deal mainly with the R-7 (more commonly known today as the Soyuz rocket) and UR-500 (Proton) rockets, and the many missions launched on them -- primarily the Sputnik, Luna, Mars, and Venera probes, and the Vostok and Voskhod manned missions. 57. The Rook by Daniel O'Malley I needed a break before tackling volume 4 and a friend recommended this. I loved it. The one sentence summary sounds a lot like Stross's Laundry books, but those have a kind of "Pratchett does Lovecraft" feel, whereas this is a lot less Lovecraft and a lot more X-Men. It can get a bit expository at times (and feels more than a little "I've written all these cool setting notes and want to show them off" when it does), but it also has a convenient built-in explanation for it -- the expository text is the contents of letters the main character is reading, written by her predecessor in an attempt to give her a crash course in how to be the Rook. The result is a rather pleasant oscillation between present-day events, explanations of the setting and characters, and reminisces about the previous Rook's missions. My biggest complaint is that, if you call the base of operations "The Rookery", the rank should be Rook as in birds, not Rook as in chess.  I was expecting a rank structure based on corvidae and instead I got one based on chess pieces.Apparently he's working on a sequel. I'm excited. 58. Rockets and People, Volume 4: The Moon Race This, honestly, is where it rather bogs down. After the Luna probes -- already well covered in volumes 2 and 3 -- the USSR didn't really participate that much in the moon race. There were four failed N-1 launches, which get described here, but for the most part the book is focused on the administrative and political reasons behind the failure of the N-1 and the Soviet moon program in general, which I don't find nearly as interesting as the technical aspects. A number of interesting programs happen in this era -- the Salyut and Mir manned stations, the Energiya heavy lifter, and the Buran spaceplane -- but as Chertok was only tangentially involved in these, they get only a few paragraphs each. On the whole, Rockets and People was worth reading, but I think if I had known going in how long it would take I might have sought out something a bit more focused on the rockets and less on the people. After that, I think I need a break for some very light reading, so I'm starting off with Isaac Asimov's David Starr, Space Ranger series. I had some of the books as a kid, but now I have the entire series and it's past time I read it.
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Aug 4, 2015 12:07
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Here's my update for May through August since I haven't updated in forever. 22. In Cold Blood by Truman Capote (classic #4) 23. The Pregnant Widow by Martin Amis 24. Joe Dimaggio: The Hero's Life by Richard Ben Cramer (a biography)- Interesting, although I think the author is much too sympathetic to Dimaggio and his wife-beating. 25. A Room Full of Bones by Elly Griffiths (a mystery)- Easy read, enjoyable. 26. Neverwhere by Neil Gaiman 27. Their Eyes Were Watching God by Zora Neale Hurston- (non-white) (classic #5)- The language in this is simply beautiful. 28. Ender's Game by Orson Scott Card (space)- Got this from the library because I didn't want to give Card any money. This was a fun book. 29. Invisible Ma by Ralph Ellison (classic #6) 30. Daughter of the Saints Growing Up in Polygamy by Dorothy Allred Solomon- Fascinating look into polygamy. 31. Leave of Grass by Walt Whitman (classic #7) 32. Gorillas in the Mist by Dian Fossey- Honestly had no idea gorilla behavior was this interesting. 33. Things Fall Apart by Chinua Arebe 34. The Narrative of Sojourner Truth by Sojourner Truth (classic #8) 35. The Nine: Inside the Secret World of the Supreme Court by Jeffrey Toobin - Loved this and found it very interesting the whole way through. (This is my book that has been sitting on my shelf) 36. The King's Curse by Philippa Gregory 37. Lost in the Meritocracy: The Undereducation of an Overachiever by Walter Kirn 38. The Color Purple by Alice Walker The vanilla read a set number of books in a year. 38/70
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Aug 5, 2015 02:03
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Female authors: 13/24 Non-fiction: 9/12 Goodreads. Bleeding Violet seemed like it could have been a decent YA book, except for the fact that the protagonist just seems to have no interest in or curiosity about anything. Weird stuff is happening, and she doesn't so much take it in stride as just kind of ignore it. The main plot doesn't even get started until well into the second half of the book, and then it gets resolved by the protagonist suddenly developing super powers (because of her bipolar disorder interacting with the magic of the town). I'm familiar enough with the story of the holocaust that that part of Maus didn't really do a lot for me, but I did really like the character of Vladek as an old man, both the way he told the story of his life during World War II and the stuff about him in the "present day" sections. My biggest issue with It's a Bird is that I felt I didn't really have enough context to care about the protagonist, so he basically just came across as an arsehole most of the time. He had his reasons, obviously, but I wasn't invested in them so I was more against him than with him. And then the ending seems to skip straight to "and then everything was OK again" and now he likes Superman, I guess. It didn't really work for me. And it also didn't really seem to say anything much about Superman either. It Came from the North might be worth reading as an introduction to some interesting authors you probably haven't heard of before, but it's pretty inconsistent. I liked some of the stories, I disliked some, and most were just sort of OK. It did put me onto Datura though, which was better, but mostly because of its side characters rather than the central plot. I also tried reading another book by Krohn, Tainaron: Mail from Another City, and found it just completely dull and pointless.
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Aug 5, 2015 09:14
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thespaceinvader posted:1: Cryptonomicon by Neal Stephenson
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Aug 5, 2015 22:15
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quote:1. The Forge of God by Greg Bear 27. The Spirit Thief(Eli Monpress #1) by Rachel Aaron 28. Norwegian Wood by Haruki Murakami 29. Murder on the Orient Express by Agatha Christie 30. Beacon 23 Parts 1 and 2 by Hugh Howey 31. The Life-Changing Magic of Tidying Up by Marie Kondo 32. Foundation and Empire by Isaac Asimov 33. Life, The Universe and Everything by Douglas Adams July Update, going to try to write more in my reviews and update on a regular basis for the rest of the year. First up is Revelation Space. Being dropped into 3 separate stories across two worlds and a ship all light years apart made the first 1/3 of the book a bit tough to start. Once things started coming together and I started understanding some of the tech/terminology that was presented. Followed the story along really well even though some of more science stuff like the black hole and neutron stars explanation had me a little lost, even with my greater than average knowledge of space. But in the end I did like the book and will be picking up the others in the series. I guess The Spirit Thief is compared to The Lies of Locke Lamora in it’s description. Aside from being fantasy and having a thief as a main character, they felt completely different. The Spirit Thief is a much much lighter, straightforward story. I liked it and was nice to read something light after Revelation Space. I guess I bought the omnibus so I’ll finish off the others in the series later. Norwegian Wood was my selection for a book about love or hate in the booklord challenge. I had little to go on about the book other than the introduction blurb on Amazon. It’s hard to explain what I liked about it, but I thought it was quite good. Probably one of my favorite books I've read this year. I chose Murder on the Orient Express as the mystery selection for the challenge. I could have chosen a sci-fi or fantasy mystery but thought I would pick something different and out of my comfort zone. While it was quite straightforward (murder, investigation, conclusion) I did enjoy it. I don’t know if I would reading more mysteries like this, but that is more because of so many other books to read and so little time, but it was worthwhile to read at least one. I think Beacon 23 is a new set of short stories by Hugh Howey that at the end will combine to be a full length novel. So far #1, 2 and 3 have been released. I liked #1 more than #2 and have but not read #3. The stories revolve around an unnamed protagonist living alone on a beacon to guide FTL ships through a dangerous asteroid field and something happens. At only 20 to 30 pages each they are quick reads, but fun enough to keep reading as they are released. The Life-Changing Magic of Tidying Up is my selection for philosophy. I’m not real familiar with Zen philosophy before reading this book so I am just guessing based on it’s Amazon categories that this book applies for philosophy and I think I picked up at least a little bit of Zen philosophy in the process. The basic idea is that tidying up your living space will make everything much better in your life. Remove things that do not bring joy, don’t pack away a bunch of stuff that you may one day use(you never will use it), treating your belongings with respect. I guess it makes a bit of sense, maybe? Some of the techniques the book uses to tidy are strange like emptying your purse/backpack every day and putting stuff away until the next day. But others are more normal like using empty shoe boxes as organizers in your drawers. In an effort to finish/advance further in some of the series that I have read only one or two of I picked up Foundation and Empire. It begins about 100 years after Foundation and it was good. Not quite as good as Foundation, but definitely good. As it is 300 years since the start of Foundation, the themes of a declining and failing empire are definitely obvious. I liked the merchant princes part of Foundation the most so continuing with the traders(either Foundation or independent) was interesting to me. I guess the consensus is to read the first three so one more to go! Booklord Challenge 1. The vanilla read a set number of books in a year. 33/52 2. 3. 4. 5. 6. 7. A collection of poetry 8. 9. 10. The Blind Owl (Free translation if your ok with reading on a screen or cant find a copy!) 11. 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.
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Aug 6, 2015 18:09
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Progress: 12 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. 3.5/5 Booklord Challenge 5 completed: Read a book published in the last three months to a year. 11. Anathem, Neal Stephenson. 4/5 12. The Woman In the Dunes, Kobo Abe. 4/5 Booklord Challenge 6 completed: Read a book written by a non-cracker. 13ish - Dradin In Love, from City of Saints and Madmen, Jeff Vandermeer. Mehhh. Lots of atmosphere and Vandermeer in love with his own writing. Interesting possibilities wasted on a very dumb plot. You knew the missionary was in love with a hologram/something not real, which made all his efforts pointless. Not sure if the rest of the collection is worth reading. Started the second story which has a bunch of snarky footnotes and I can't say that stirred the blood much. 1 out of 5 stars. Booklord Challenge 7 completed: Read a short story.
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Aug 6, 2015 21:52
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I Enjoyed the blind Owl a lot. the article contained with the translation probably helped with that immensely. Thinking a little more about it , so did the length. I'm sure It would've been exhausting if the same theme was expanded over 300+ pages. I think I'm approaching (if not done) the book lord challenge. I haven't consciously been reading things to check off the list other than the wildcard.
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Aug 8, 2015 01:05
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thespaceinvader posted:1: Cryptonomicon by Neal Stephenson
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Aug 8, 2015 10:30
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