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crusoe 57 - Roald Dahl - The BFG - I read this to my kid at night over a few weeks. It was one of those books I read as a kid, but I didn't remember a whole lot about it. As a kid, I can see why I would have enjoyed it, but it lost some of its magic as a grownup... its easy to see why this one didn't become a movie. 58 - William Golding - Lord of the Flies - I read this, considering if I wanted to teach it or not. Ultimately, this one is a bit too tough for my kiddos, with the language and all, but down the road I might want to incorporate it. It's a fantastic book though, and you can see so many things having been inspired by it. 59 -Anne Frank - The Diary of Anne Franl I am 32 years old. I have a degree in English, and I've been teaching middle school for 6 years now and I have never read this. It is one of those books everybody reads. I will probably teach this one. I like how raw it is, and Anne is actually quite clever and witty. Without context, it probably isn't a big deal, but I feel like I'm going to break a few minds, as my kids are all inner-city and they spend tons of time on Civil Rights and none on WW2. 60 - Sir Walter Scott- Ivanhoe. An okay adventure story. It has some really fun and interesting elements, the Robin Hood connection is a blast, but perhaps the most dissapointing thing is that the protagonist isn't in a vast majority of the story - and Scott took the easy way out when it come to writing action scenes, cutting them out, or having a character describe it to another. 61 Frank Miller - Ronin: There is a run of Graphic Novels coming up, as I needed a break. Overall, I didn't really love Ronin. There were some cool and interesting parts, but the overall premise was just sort of silly. Some of Miller's art was gorgeous, other moments hard to read. I just don't love Frank Miller all that much I suppose. 62. Andy Weir - The Martian - I Loved this book. It was so much fun to read, and the fact that it made an attempt to have some connection to scientific accuracy was a huge added bonus. I stayed up late, late into the night reading this one. It was like being a kid again. I dismissed this as being poppy trend fiction, but it really deserves the attention it gets. 63 - 66: Brian Wood - DMZ : I re-read the entire series of DMZ. It is 12 volumes, but I only counted it as four, as those last four I read for the first time. Since i started DMZ, I have really loved this book. It might not be a game changer like Y The Last Man, Preacher, or Sandman, but it is a really strong series. It's overall tone and feel is unique. The ending is really bittersweet, but it is one of my favorite series. 67 Daniel O'Malley - The Rook: Also an amazingly fun book that I spent hours into the night reading. I got it on my kindle based on the buzz, but the summary on the back didn't really excite me. It seemed like a lot of old ideas and cliches thrown together. It is... but it comes together in a way that was really enjoyable and felt fresh. 68 - 70: Neil Gaiman - Sandman (Vol 1-3): i started reading Sandman, which I have never read before. I have enjoyed nearly all of it. It is really, really well done. I can see how it was ground breaking at the time, but it doesn't ignite the same passion that other Vertigo books have. I will finish it, but I don't feel inclined to rush. 71 - Michael Connelly - The Last Coyote: Trying to detox from all of the old classics with a really light mystery/thriller. I really enjoy Connelly's work. Again, no new ground is being broken by the Harry Bosch novels, but they are still really well done.. I still need to track down my wildcard "A Tree Grows in Brooklyn" but in the meantime, with my job starting back up this week, I'm probably going to focus on some lighter, quicker reads...and once the school year is under way try and focus on finishing off the book list.
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Aug 9, 2015 15:08
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I haven't been reading much and really neglected keeping up-to-date. Now it's hard to remember details of some of these! 1. The vanilla read a set number of books in a year. [36/52] 4. Philosophy 5. History 7. A collection of poetry 10. The Blind Owl (Free translation if your ok with reading on a screen or cant find a copy!) 13. Something dealing with the unreal 18. Biography 22. A mystery 29. Fatherland (Robert Harris) This was reasonably entertaining from what I remember. The POV character is a dissatisfied police detective in an imagined 1960s Nazi Germany. While investigating the murder of a party official he uncovers disturbing truths about what events which occurred during WWII putting his own life in jeopardy. 30. Black Like Me (John Howard Griffin) A white man passes himself as a black man and travels around the depth south in the late 1950s. This book was both interesting and disturbing, the sense of menace and danger when he travelled into Alabama was particularly visceral. 31. Sword of Destiny (Andrzej Sapkowski) I read this in preparation for playing The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt. This book is a loosely related set of short stories. I would recommend if you are interested in The Witcher Universe. 32. Blood Song (Anthony Ryan) This was a reread, since I remembered liking it and had planned to read the series now that it is complete. I was surprised just how little I remembered of the book, especially the formulaic training section. Didn't like it as much this time, but was still entertaining. 33. Player of Games (Iain M. Banks) This is a paperback which I've had sitting around for perhaps 5 years, I picked it up after reading Consider Phlebas. I started it back then, but did not like the opening at all. I still don't like the opening, but once it got going, which for me was when the Game was introduced, it was a great book. 34. Use of Weapons (Iain M. Banks) Another book in The Culture series. This one has an unusual structure. It skips between passages covering current events and past events. I don't want to spoil anything, great book. Comment related to the ending: Even after the chapter where Zakalwe shoots himself in the head, I didn't quite figure out what was going on. Almost as slow as Sma! 35. The Outsider (Albert Camus) This was surprising. Merseault seems so passive and uninvolved in his own life. This was bleak but strangely comforting. 36. The Shadow Child (Judith Lennox) On the eve of WWI, Alix is holidaying in France with family and loses her two year old cousin Charlie. This deals primarily with two topics, firstly there is Alix's guilt over the disappearance and later the mystery of what happened to Charlie. An enjoyable light read but the ending does tie things up too neatly with a ridiculous coincidence.
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Aug 11, 2015 14:09
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thespaceinvader posted:1: Cryptonomicon by Neal Stephenson The Diving Bundle I really enjoyed. It's relatively rare that scifi deals with far-future universes in which things have genuinely been forgotten, and this is an excellent take on that general concept. I really like the idea of wreck diving and the various technologies and stories that grew out of it, and I've been consistently impressed with Rusch's writing skills. I'll certainly look up more of her work. Playing for Keeps was a pretty fun super-people book. I enjoyed most of the low-powered-supers' powers, but the plot was a little dull, and I wasn't 100% sold on the writing for some of it. Certainly competent, and I did enjoy it, though. Strong Arm Tactics was great fun, well-written schlocky mil-sf with some genuinely funny moments and a reasonably amusing and well-written plot. I enjoyed it, I'd read this author and this series again. Supervillainous I didn't really get on with that well. I like the idea of an embedded reporter covering a supervillain, and Hammerspace was moderately imaginative as a villain, but overall it was a bit dull and plodding, and the author's prejudices re. guns showed through a bit too strongly for my taste in a couple of places. Currently reading Stars: the anthology edited by Janis Ian and Mike Reznick. I've mostly enjoyed it so far, and given that I'd really not paid much attention to Ian's music previously, it's also turned me on to a good musician, so I'm doubly pleased with it. Recommended.
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Aug 24, 2015 22:30
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Oops, I haven't posted since April. Also I'm way behind schedule. Oh well here goes: 1. The vanilla read a set number of books in a year (25/45) oliven posted:Next up will probably be Unwind by Neal Shusterman. 17. Unwind by Neal Shusterman: This one was alright, even though it's based on an absolutely ridiculous premise. In a not-so-distant future, the abortion debate resulted in a civil war and the outcome is that abortions are illegal, but between the ages of thirteen and eighteen, parents can have their child "unwound," whereby all of the child's organs are transplanted into different donors. For some reason, kids that are marked for unwinding is not ok with this and the book focuses on three kids who run away from this and try to survive. The best/worst part of the book was experiencing the actual unwinding process through an unwind's point of view. Though not obviously gross or whatever (no blood, nothing graphic) it made me extremely uncomfortable. I doubt I'll read the rest of the series but it was still a fairly enjoyable read. 18. Ubik by Philip K. Dick: I love this kind of old-timey sci-fi where the distant future is 1992 and absolutely outdated concepts (like payphones or whatever) are super advanced and people cannot live without them. Ubik explores existential concepts of life and death and everything inbetween. And psychic powers on the moon. I liked it. 19. The Rithmatist by Brandon Sanderson: Sanderson is so good at constructing these vivid worlds it almost makes me mad. In this one, people draw stuff with chalk, it comes to life, they fight, etc. Simple idea really, but well done nonetheless. 20. The First Fifteen Lives of Harry August by Claire North: This one started out a bit all over the place, but got a lot better eventually. It's about a guy who, when he dies, is returned to his child self with all his memories from previous lives intact. There are more people like this throughout the world, and some aim to change the natural course of history and basically end the world. An enjoyable read. 21. Perfect State by Brandon Sanderson: Short story that explores a sort of love story between two people who are both the most important person in their respective worlds. Short, but good. 22. Sphere by Michael Crichton: I didn't even realise this is from 1987. It doesn't read as "old" (or I don't know enough about equipment needed to survive on the bottom of the Pacific Ocean to spot the difference). It started out really good, and then quickly spiraled into "stuff happens because plot needs to move forward". It wasn't bad, but it wasn't great either. 23. You're Never Weird on the Internet (Almost) by Felicia Day: I've been a fan of Felicia Day's work since The Guild, so this was a fun read. I especially enjoyed the bits about putting the show together, and also the bits about her WoW addiction (not that I've been in a similar situation or anything). Pretty good overall! 24. Please Ignore Vera Dietz by A.S. King: Eh, this was alright. Vera is in love with her best friend Charlie, who acts like a dick towards her before dying in an accident. She knows all his secrets, including some details about his death, and struggles throughout on whether or not she should reveal his secrets and clear his name. The premise wasn't bad, I just didn't like some of the more "supernatural" aspects of it (which I guess is insane based on all the other poo poo I read, but whatever). 25. Steelheart by Brandon Sanderson: I don't even know what the gently caress happened here. This is the fourth Sanderson book I've read this year, and I've generally liked all his other stuff so far. This one, however, was just… Ugh. The main character was annoying, the twists predictable and the only female character with any sort of personality was literally just there to be erratic and moody for no reason, but don't worry about that because she's super hot and the main character still wants to sleep with her. What a mess. Currently reading Etiquette & Espionage by Gail Carriger.
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Aug 25, 2015 13:14
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Behind on updating as usual, but at least I shotgunned a bunch of sci-fi when I was on the beach in Italy this month!Mahlertov Cocktail posted:1. The Lies of Locke Lamora by Scott Lynch (reread) Inventing Human Rights was really interesting, and for the most part a sensible walkthrough of how human rights got to the point where they are today. The connection between portraits and human rights seemed tenuous to me but Hunt's research seemed to back it up. Theodore Rex was a great book about TR's two terms as president. It's fascinating to get into more detail about presidents, particularly since you tend to get a fairly vague overview in high school history classes. The Meaning of It All was good, though it had the obvious flaw of being a slightly cleaned-up transcript of a lecture series. Feynman is certainly a great mind, and I appreciate his logical developments, but in the end a lot of it doesn't resonate with me emotionally even though it makes sense. I suppose I shouldn't have expected that, given it was a series of lectures on thinking scientifically. The Human Division was fabulous. I really like Scalzi's style, and I liked the focus on diplomatic relations rather than pure military action. He's really done a great job developing his universe and taking the stories and characters in cool new directions. Zoe's Tale was a nice little book, though the dramatic tension obviously suffered somewhat since I knew it was a companion book to The Last Colony. Still, Zoe's fresh perspective made me appreciate the basic story even more and it definitely fleshed out her character to a significant degree. Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? was a spectacular book, and is deservedly a classic. Given the film adaptation is one of my favorite movies of all time, I loved finding out that it wasn't a one-to-one adaptation of the book, even with many similar scenes and themes. The end was nearly completely depressing but pulled up a bit at the very end. Currently reading: The Name of the Rose by Umberto Eco. Great so far. The theology is really interesting since that's not something I usually read about, plus it's unexpectedly funny sometimes. Also reading The Android's Dream by John Scalzi! So, the BOOKLORD CHALLENGE beckons. Lessee what I've done. quote:1. The vanilla read a set number of books (45) in a year - 26 so far!
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Aug 27, 2015 00:06
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So, one day after my last update, I got hit by a car. I also got an e-reader. As a result of these two things, I read a ton in August: Patton Oswalt - Silver Screen Fiend John Wyndham - The Day of the Triffids Aziz Ansari - Modern Romance Brian Keene - Darkness on the Edge of Town Daniel Bryan - Yes!: My Improbable Journey to the Main Event of WrestleMania Ursula K. Le Guin - Rocannon's World Brian Keene - The Rising Ta-Nehisi Coates - Between the World and Me Elizabeth Gillan Muir - Riverdale: East of the Don Moshe Kasher - Kasher in the Rye Brian Keene - City of the Dead I was on painkillers and generally read a lot of "easy" crap, at least at the start of the month. I gave Brian Keene 3 chances to not be a horrible writer but all 3 were strikes, so he's out. Horrible. The Elizabeth Muir book counts as my history book - it's a history of Toronto, specifically my neighborhood. I'm still working on "Please Kill Me" for my #16 challenge. Here's my progress on the Booklord challenge: 1. 2. 3. 4. Philosophy 5. 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 (in progress) 17. 18. 19. 20. 21. 22. A mystery
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Aug 28, 2015 05:31
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apophenium posted:1. Forge of Darkness by Steven Erikson. Gosh it was so great to get back into the Malazan world. I wasn't that impressed with Assail from last year, but FoD blew me away. Can't wait for Fall of Light. 14. Hunger by Knut Hamsun. A strange and twisted tale. Darkly humorous and thoroughly enjoyable. 15. Star Trek: Vulcan's Heart by Josepha Sherman and Susan Shwartz. A sequel of sorts to Vulcan's Forge, which I read last year. No where near as fun as the first book, with some creepy moments. I'm very cynical about Star Trek books now. 16. The Pale King by David Foster Wallace. The first sentence of this book made me cry a little bit. Painfully fragmented, but beautiful nonetheless. Boredom as transcendence. Would have been interesting to see where DFW would have taken the plot. 17. Inversions by Iain M. Banks. Finishing a Culture book is bittersweet. I liked this one a lot more than I thought I would, given that it's only barely a Culture book. Very unique format. 18. Culture and Imperialism by Edward Said. Whew, this book was a struggle. I'm trying to acclimate myself to non-fiction. I enjoyed this, but it was tough at times to motivate myself to pick it up. 19. The Dark Forest by Cixin Liu. Superb followup to The Three Body Problem. While not as inventive as the first book, it still brings in some interesting ideas. Tie that in with some better pacing and you've got a real winner. Eager for the third book. 19/30 books for the year, 5/5 on unique female authors, 3/5 on non-fiction. Currently reading Black Against Empire and Star Trek: Seekers - Second Nature.
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Aug 28, 2015 15:18
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Man I keep falling behind in posting in this thread. I read 13 more books! To button up my personal non-fiction challenge I read The Sports Gene about the science of why people are good at different sports, The Worst Hard Time about the dust bowl, and The Invisible Bridge: The Fall of Nixon and the Rise of Reagan by Rick Perlstein. They were all interesting; Perlstein was the best of the lot but I thought Invisible Bridge wasn't quite as good as Nixonland. I read Between the World and Me for my 15. Something published this year/past 3 months challenge, although I haven't had time to post my thoughts in the book of the month thread. I read In the Realms of the Unreal: Insane Writings for my unreal challenge, not just based on the title - well I guess sort of since it was taken from the Henry Darger's 15,000 page book which I started reading about when I did a search for "unreal". It is also a collection of writing from people institutionalized for mental health problems. It was about as hit and miss as you would expect, the poetry and some of the surreal stuff was good but then there was a lot of incoherent stuff which wasn't even well written. I might pick another book for this challenge. For my poetry challenge I read The Best of the Best American Poetry (as in, the best of the anthology series "The Best American Poetry") which was really good, it covered 25 years from 1988 on, I like the more modern stuff which is more about cool thoughts and imagery and not making the best rhyme. I'm probably talking out of my rear end there since I don't know much poetry otherwise so I apologize. I just finished Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead for my Absurdist challenge which was really funny; it was also my first play in book form I have read, but I am not using it for that challenge, so I am looking forward to reading another in the next month or so. For my books not from America or Europe personal challenge I read The Museum of Innocence by Orhan Pamuk, The Pickup by Nadine Gordimer, and The Day the Leader was Killed by Naguib Mahfouz. They all complimented each other really well although by accident, I read Nadine Gordimer as a South African writer but the protagonist ends up moving to a Middle Eastern country with her husband. Pamuk's was my favorite of the bunch but they were all really solid. Then I also read the Tibetan Book of the Dead in preparation for The Blind Owl which I am reading next. I also read The Windup Girl by Paolo Bacigalupi which was not super great and The Luminaries by Eleanor Catton which was really good but I am not going to say much about either of those because I need to shower and drive to an out of state wedding.
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Aug 28, 2015 17:31
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thespaceinvader posted:1: Cryptonomicon by Neal Stephenson Currently reading Strike! by... someone... but it's sucking hard enough that despite the trilogy being available in that story bundle, I'll probably not bother going beyond the first book. It reads like someone who reads a lot of comics tried to write a comic but couldn't draw, so just put the script into a novel. Full of really dry description and sound effects written IN CAPS! WITH EXCLAMATION MARKS! Meh.
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Aug 28, 2015 18:54
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Progress: 14 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 - Drabin In Love, from City of Saints and Madmen, Jeff Vandermeer. 1 out of 5 stars. Booklord Challenge 7 completed: Read a short story. 14. Station Eleven, by Emily St. John Mandel. One of those very rare perfect books. She uses the superflu armageddon trope to tell a connected story of a series of really interesting characters. Masterfully done. The tone of the book reminded me a bit of The Dog Stars, which I really loved. Will definitely be checking out Mandel's earlier work. 5 out of 5 stars. In between I tried to read The Goblin Emperor. It was an okay idea but I'm really not into "palace intrigue" stuff, and the bizarre language used in the book - which often forced you to scramble to the Appendix to understand which character was which - got old fast.
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Aug 29, 2015 12:42
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Argali posted:14. Station Eleven, by Emily St. John Mandel. One of those very rare perfect books. She uses the superflu armageddon trope to tell a connected story of a series of really interesting characters. Masterfully done. The tone of the book reminded me a bit of The Dog Stars------- Okay that's enough, I'm sold.
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Aug 29, 2015 13:27
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August~ 74. Ready Player One - Ernest Cline 75. Perdido Street Station - China Mieville 76. The Waves - Virginia Woolf 77. The Color of Water - James McBride 78. The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn - Mark Twain 79. Beasts - John Crowley 80. Augustus - John Williams 81. Blood Rites (Dresden Files #6) - Jim Butcher 82. Half a War (Shattered Sea #3) -Joe Abercrombie 83. Engine Summer - John Crowley 84. Endymion (Hyperion Cantos #3) - Dan Simmons 85. All the Pretty Horses (Border Trilogy #1) - Cormac McCarthy 86. Rise of Endymion (Hyperion Cantos #4) - Dan Simmons 87. The Scar (Bas-Lag #2) - China Mieville 88. The Bad Girl - Mario Vargas Llosa This month was full of rereads and fantasy/sci-fi for the most part. I finished the Hyperion series with Endymion and Rise of Endymion; I can't think of a sci-fi series I've enjoyed more in recent memory (even if the writing in the two Endymion books wasn't as good as the first two). The first two Bas-Lag books (Perdido Street Station and The Scar) were rereads that I'd been intending to do for a long time - while Mieville is good, those two continue to be my favorites of his. Finally, I finished a collection of short novels from John Crowley (whom I love for his fantasy Little, Big) and while The Deep and Beasts were both pretty good novels, Engine Summer was absolutely stellar, one of my favorite post-apocalyptic books I've ever read - in that it was so strange. It reminded me a good bit of Riddley Walker, without the language barrier. On the not-so-good side was Ready Player One. Somewhat cringe-worthy, but it kept me turning the pages, I guess. It'll be interesting to see what Spielberg does with it. Beyond that, The Color of Water was a lovely memoir about the author's mother - a Jewish woman who left her repressively religious family to marry an African-American man and eventually raise 12 children - and a look at the author's young life itself. Having read his John Brown novel The Good Lord Bird a year or two ago, I had my eye out for more James McBride, and I gotta say I like that guy. I also picked up Augustus based on my love of John Williams's Stoner, and it was pretty good too - if not as good as Stoner - about the life and intrigues of Augustus Caesar, written in an epistolary style. Finally, my other favorite would have to be All the Pretty Horses. I think I did myself wrong when I jumped into Blood Meridian as my first McCarthy book, because it kicked my rear end. I've been reading his less-imposing stuff - Suttree and now the Border Trilogy - and I'm really starting to appreciate his work. All the Pretty Horses was fantastic, possibly my favorite I've read of his. It can go from a laconic, almost spare style to incredibly eloquent and lovely language, and succeeds incredibly at both. Who knows? After the Border Trilogy I may take another swing at Blood Meridian sometime. 1. The vanilla read a set number of books in a year.: 88/100 2. Read a female author: 13 (a second Woolf book) 3. The non-white author: (McBride) 4. 5. 6. 7. A collection of poetry 8. 9. 10. The Blind Owl 11. 12. 13. 14. Wildcard (Some one else taking the challenge will tell you what to read) 15. Something published this year or the past three months: "Half a War" 16. 17. A play 18. Biography 19. 20. 21. 22. Chamberk fucked around with this message at 15:52 on Aug 31, 2015 |
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Aug 30, 2015 22:10
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thespaceinvader posted:1: Cryptonomicon by Neal Stephenson
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Aug 30, 2015 23:28
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Female authors: 14/24 Non-fiction: 11/12 Goodreads. The Happiest Refugee was interesting and entertaining. I'm not really a fan of Do's stand-up, so I probably never would have read it but for the fact that I was assigned two chapters of it for a class, and having read those I was invested enough to continue. The Little Princesses was a pretty entertaining book about some pretty interesting people. I don't have a lot to say about either one, but I enjoyed them. The Kewpie Killer, on the other hand, was incredibly dumb. Every plot point is telegraphed way ahead of time and the characters are really bad at picking up on the obvious. One example from early on: The killer leaves these plaster "kewpie" dolls by the victims, but everyone writes them off as being prizes from the carnival, even though it's specifically and repeatedly mentioned that they're not the same as the ones the carnival has, which are plastic. A bigger problem though is that the protagonist just doesn't seem to do anything. She just follows other characters around while they investigate. Occasionally whoever she's with will be struck by a sudden fit of stupidity so that she can make the obvious suggestion to get them back on track, but the book would probably be improved if she were written out. Also, by about two thirds of the way through it seems like the solution is obvious and the book should be just about over, but then the insane plot twists begin, each chapter introducing some new and implausible element. And I don't know if Jones felt they'd written themself into a corner or what, but the book has the most abrupt ending I can remember reading. The plot is suddenly and anti-climatically resolved, and where you'd expect a final chapter showing the characters' lives going back to normal instead you just get... nothing. And I refer to the author as "they" because "Falafel Jones" is obviously a pseudonym and they seem to have gone out of their way to make sure no one can find out anything about them, including their gender. The other book I read and hated this month was Neverwhere. And mostly it was down to the protagonist (although the plot was also pretty meandering and the twist predictable). But mostly I just hate Richard Mayhew. He is among the worst protagonists in anything I've read/played/watched. He exists only to be the dullest, stupidest, least relatable audience stand-in ever. Even on the few occasions where he does attempt to do something, he still does the dumbest poo poo. And then at the end, he finally gets to go home, but decides that his life is inevitably going to be boring so he returns to London Below, like as though that will somehow lead to him having a meaningful life. What's he going to do, track down Door again and follow her around like a lost puppy? I hate this guy.
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Aug 31, 2015 07:10
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Prolonged Shame posted:1) The Other Boleyn Girl - Philippa Gregory After a couple of slim months I finally had a productive month reading. Here's my August: 60) Dead Until Dark (Sookie Stackhouse #1) - Charlaine Harris- I've been binge-watching the show and liking it so I thought I'd give the books a try. The show sticks close to the book plot, but I liked the additional insight we get in the book. I'll keep reading these. 61) The Rose and the Yew Tree - Mary Westmacott (AKA Agatha Christie) - A lovely little book. Quintessentially Christie, even though it is not a mystery. 62) Black Powder War (Temeraire #3) - Naomi Novik- Definitely a step up from the previous novel, but I feel like this should have been a chapter in a bigger book rather than a standalone novel. 63) Foucault's Pendulum - Umberto Eco - I alternately enjoyed and loathed this. Parts of it were great, other parts were tedious. Overall I liked it. 64) Dead Wake: The Last Crossing of the Lusitania - Erik Larson - This was great. The author made me hope everything would end up being ok even though I knew that obviously wasn't the case. Perfect length and pacing, and I liked that he went into detail about the submarine and crew that fired the torpedo. 65) The Queen's Fool - Philippa Gregory- This was just absurd. The author's original character suddenly becomes the confidante of both Queen Mary I and Princess Elizabeth, not to mention Lord Dudley and everyone else she meets. Then a romance/marriage was tacked on. Not very good. 66) Truman - David McCullough - I've been looking forward to this one since reading McCullough's 'John Adams' and it did not disappoint. Absolutely fantastic. It was supposed to be my July president but, at over 1000 pages, it ran over into August. Highly recommended, even if you're not reading bios of all the presidents. 67) 41 Stories - O. Henry - O. Henry is always listed on lists of classics, but I had never actually read anything by him, so I decided to remedy that. His stories are charming and almost always very satisfying. 68) If on a Winter's Night a Traveler - Italo Calvino - I loved this, despite the repeated blue balls of the unfinished stories. I selected it for my post modern category in the Booklord Challenge. 69) Eisenhower in War and Peace - Jean Edward Smith - This was really good, but paled compared to the Truman I had just finished. Ike was a very interesting man and I was unfamiliar with his presidency so this was quite interesting. Total: 69/100 Presidential bios: 8/12 Non Fiction barring prez bios: 15/25 Stravinsky's Challenge: 1. The vanilla read a set number of books in a year. 69/100 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 8. Something Post-Modern - If on a Winter's Night a Traveler - Italo Calvino 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 Aside from the overall number goal, I'm done with the booklord challenge! While some categories were easy (female author, biography) some definitely pushed me outside my comfort zone (post modern, absurdist, Blind Owl) and I got to read some books that I would not have otherwise picked up. I'd do this again next year for sure.
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Aug 31, 2015 18:30
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September update. I've been a bit lax on updating, so this may take multiple posts. Plus, I've had an ear infection recently, which put me off reading as much. #53: Epileptic - David B.: French graphic novel about the author’s relationship with his epileptic older brother. Interesting black-and-white artwork. 4/5. #54: Tough Guide to Fantasyland - Dianne Wynne Jones: A satirical travel guide to fantasy tropes and clichés. Maybe I need to read more stereotypical fantasy books for this to have the full effect. Still worth a read. 3/5. #55: The Reapers are the Angels - Alden Bell: A post-apocalyptic zombie novel, but a bit more different from the norm (in terms of writing style, characterisation and events). Kind of like Colson Whitehead's Zone One (in that they both involve zombies and are more literary than your typical zombie novel). Zombies. 4/5. #56: The Manhattan Projects, vol. 2: They Rule - Jonathan Hickman: The second collection in the series. A bit more overtly ridiculous than the first set of comics: for example, there is a scene where Einstein and Feynman are shooting FDR robots with a machine gun. If that doesn't sound too silly, check it out. 4/5. #57: How to be a Victorian - Ruth Goodman: An exploration of daily life for the average Victorian citizen, including direct re-creation by the author (so a bit more involved than your average Victorian cosplay). Reasonably interesting. 4/5. #58: East of West, vol. 1 - Jonathan Hickman: A sci-fi/fantasy Western involving the four Horsemen of the Apocalypse. Not as good as the Manhattan Projects series, but not too bad. 3/5. #59: Annihilation - Jeff Vandermeer: In which a group of people investigates an occurrence. It ends badly. Won the Nebula (along with the other two books in the series), so if you're interested in biopunk, check it out. 4/5. #60: The Book of Taltos - Steven Brust: A compendium encompassing the fourth and fifth books in the Vlad Taltos series. Both were good; at the very least, both were better than Teckla. 4/5. #61: Fosse - Sam Wasson: A biography of the multitalented Bob Fosse. One interesting fact that I learned from this book was knowledge of his final film, Star 80, which starred Eric Roberts. Yes, *that* Eric Roberts. Did that movie turn him crazy or was he already nuts? Definitely check it out if you're interested in Mr. Fosse. 4/5. #62: Victoria: A Life - A. N. Wilson: An extensive biography of Queen Victoria. In summation: she was an accomplished and interesting woman who was lucky and unlucky at various points of her life. I might not agree with all of her opinions (feminism, especially), but I have a lot of respect for Her Majesty. 4/5. #63: Little Failure - Gary Shteyngart: A partial autobiography by the author born Igor Shteyngart in Soviet Russia. Worth a look if you're interested in the author (or even if, like me, you've never read a single book by the guy). 4/5. #64: Gut: the inside story of our body's most underrated organ - Giulia Enders: A semi-humourous look at the human digestive system. I don't have any major digestive problems, but my brother has ulcerative colitis (and one of my cousins has full-on Crohn's), so there's some familial interest for me. (Personally, the only real problem I have is an intolerance of egg whites. It's great to feel like crap because of some ninja mayonnaise). 3/5. #65: Snowpiercer - Jacques Lob: The graphic novel on which the titular movie is loosely based. You know how so many people think that books are automatically superior to their movie adaptations? That is usually the case, but in this instance, they'd be wrong. This isn't the worst graphic novel ever (I don't want to know what would be worse than Frank Miller's Holy Terror), but the movie version is so much better it's not even funny. The movie, I'd give 4.5 or even 5 stars out of 5: I gave this a much lower score. In the book's defense, the artwork is fairly good. If you really want to investigate the origins of the movie, do like I did and get it out from the library. TLDR: 2/5. #66: Smoke Gets In Your Eyes: And Other Lessons from the Crematory: Caitlin Doughty: In which the author talks about her experiences working at a morgue cremating dead people. Worth a look if the subject matter interests you. 3.5(4)/5. Continued in next post.
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Sep 1, 2015 02:12
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August. 45. Endymion. Dan Simmons. At the end I felt like I read the first chapter of a way longer book. Still good. 46. Monstrous Regiment. Terry Pratchett. This one was a weird book, it started slow and got boring at the middle and then it started to pick up fast by the end to get pretty awesome. Characters were awesome too. 47. Glasshouse. Charles Stross. Started confusing but got better by the middle, then confusing again and awesome by the end. 48. A Hat Full of Sky. Terry Pratchett. The story was quite simple but the characters make the book amazing. 49. The Warrior's Apprentice. Louis McMaster Bujold. Fun story, but some characters were too one-dimensional for my tastes. 50. Going Postal. Terry Pratchett. Awesome book, the protagonist is one of the best in the series. 1. The vanilla read a set number of books in a year: 50/60 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: We Need to Talk About Kevin, Lionel Shriver. 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: Burmese Days, George Orwell. 21. Short story(s) 22. A mystery Discworld challenge 33/41 I need a wildcard, please!
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Sep 2, 2015 03:08
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ZakAce posted:
Ah, that doesn't bode well for me! I loved the movie and bought the graphic novels immediately after but haven't yet read them because they're so inconvenient to handle. Hope I enjoy them anyway.
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Sep 2, 2015 03:36
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Talas posted:I need a wildcard, please! Amberville by Tim Davys.
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Sep 2, 2015 04:37
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August update. Another slow-ish month again. 1. The vanilla read a set number of books in a year. - 34/40 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 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 32. The Comfort of Strangers, Ian McEwan 33. The Unbearable Lightness of Being, Milan Kundera 34. Homo Faber, Max Frisch 34/40
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Sep 2, 2015 09:06
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what did you think of Homo Faber?
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Sep 2, 2015 09:55
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Update through August. 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. Njålssoga (aka Njåls 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. 16. Academic Exercises by K.J. Parker. 17. Straits of Hell by Taylor Anderson. 18. Seveneves by Neal Stephenson. 19. My Real Children by Jo Walton. 20. Forrådt ("Betrayed") by Amalie Skram. 21. Nemesis Games by James S.A. Corey. 22. On the Steel Breeze by Alastair Reynolds. 23. Landfall by Stephen Baxter. New: 24. The March North by Graydon Saunders. Egalitarian information-dense fantasy set in a fantasy hellworld full of horrors only some of which are describable. Everywhere is full of demons, mindcontrolling sorcerer-kings, the living dead, what have you; except for the nation of the Commonweal which has figured out some ways to survive as a (mostly) peaceful, humane civilization. This cannot be done without heavy artillery, ghosts of fallen infantrymen, ageless sorcerers and a five-ton war-sheep named Eustace. Saunders is another refugee from rec.arts.sf.written of old and his prose is easily recognizable (his posts were always recognizable as his without looking at the headers); this is his first published novel but he's already got another one out and that's on my to-read list. 25. The Long Utopia by Terry Pratchett and (probably mostly) Stephen Baxter. #4 in that series thing. Same strengths and weaknesses as the previous three. Good enough. 26. Aurora by Kim Stanley Robinson. I've always thought Robinson writes beautiful, poetic, sad books and this is no exception. Pretty unforgiving and depressing and then uplifting and humane. An unusual take on the time-honored "interstellar generation ship" theme. 27. Castaway Planet by Ryk Spoor and Eric Flint. After #26 I was in the mood for some plain old optimistic SF for enthusiastic nerds -- the kind of story where people explore stuff and encounter danger and weirdness but solve their problems using brains and duct tape -- and this scratched that itch. 28. Ørnens Sønn by Olaf Havnes. #1 in a by now twenty-year-old Norwegian fantasy trilogy by an author who went on to write a handful more books and then got cancer and died much too young; much-loved by those relatively few who have read it, which I never did back in the day. Found all three volumes in my local library and decided to have at it; and it turns out this is pretty good. The setting is fairly by-the-numbers not-Earth with a wide variety of cultures inspired by real history; but an unusual amount of attention is given to describing the geology and ecology of any visited locale, and the conditions these impose on possible economic and cultural activity for humans living there. Magic is nearly non-existent or else so subtle as to be nearly invisible; the prose is direct and simple but effective and not unpoetic; violence and sexual themes are not shied away from but neither dwelled upon in pornographic detail -- this would be quite appropriate reading for a bright middle-schooler. The basic plot is about a tyrannical empire ruling most of the world and an insurgency against this empire driven by a lineage of underground rebels from the despised and marginal peoples of the world; the ultimate success of this insurgency is already revealed early on, the remaining suspense is how it got there. Liked this a lot, will read #2 and #3 soon. 29. The Annihilation Score by Charles Stross. Love the whole Laundry series, loved this entry as well. Even as it gets grimmer and less jokey the more CASE NIGHTMARE GREEN proceeds. 30. The Dark Forest by Liu Cixin. #2 in the Three-Body Problem trilogy. Good fresh-feeling classic SF with high concepts and high stakes; loved this to bits. So far: 30/40 overall goal, of which 1/5 allowed rereads 7/10 Norwegian books 4/5 nonfiction Booklord challenge points met: 2 (Forrådt; technically met earlier but saved for a book where the gender of the author was the POINT rather than an accident) 3 (Three-Body Problem) 5 (Njålssoga), 8 (Pastoralia) 11 (My Real Children) 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 (Njålssoga) 19 (Three-Body Problem) 21 (De Fem Fyrstikkene) 22 (Menneskefluene).
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Sep 2, 2015 11:56
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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) 46 Erewhon by Samuel Butler. The good stuff. I still don't entirely see how the machine chapter is a dig at evolution but I did get what he was doing with the musical banks, which I managed to totally miss first time round. 47 Doctor Fischer of Geneva or The Bomb Party by Graham Greene. Pamphlet of a novel that... I guess counts as magical realist? A terrible Swiss oligarch has terrible parties where he tortures his terrible Swiss cronies, which the non-terrible, decent, depressed Greene protagonist gets invited to as his son-in-law. Broad-strokes on a postage stamp, basically. 48 Nostromo by Joseph Conrad. I read the start of an intro to this by some Hardy biographer which made two points: Conrad's the real depresso of fin de siecle English lit not Hardy like everyone says, and this book doesn't have an ending. Which is right, it really doesn't! I still like it though. 49 Mad Pilgrimage of the Flesh by John Lahr. Big biography of Tennessee Williams, the first after the death of the insane woman who somehow became the caretaker of his literary estate who'd previously scotched previous projects. Lahr structures this book chronologically following the plays, but takes the lead from the play's contents to expand on aspects of WIlliams' life. Suddenly Last Summer, for instance, leads to a whole chapter on Rose Williams' entire life. It also betrays its super-long gestation by the density of quotations . The two main revelations for me are that I didn't know he wrote so many plays, or how utterly awful he was. Also he once shared JFK's speed-dealer. 50 The Longest Journey by E.M. Forster. What an awful book, really makes you long for WW1. 51 The Conformist by Alberto Moravia as translated by Angus Davidson. Picked this up because I really liked the Bertolucci film and had no idea it was adapted. This was a delight to read, I really need to track down more Moravia, or possibly more Davidson. 51/60 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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Sep 2, 2015 12:04
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Burning Rain posted:what did you think of Homo Faber? I quite liked it. the Surprise Twist was forshadowed pretty heavily, but everything from trip to the hospital onwards was pretty well written. It was an interesting take on the whole "man coming to grips with his own mortality" motif.
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Sep 2, 2015 14:22
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quote:1. The Forge of God by Greg Bear 34. The Spirit Rebellion (The Legend of Eli Monpress, #2) by Rachel Aaron 35. Beacon 23 parts 3,4, and 5 by Hugh Howey 36. The Remaining: Allegiance (The Remaining #5) by D.J. Molles August Update: Things kind of fell apart in August. Picked up another new class to teach which meant my two 13 hour flights went from reading time to class prep time. Still got through a couple books, but would have preferred more and something in the booklord challenge would have been good as well. I liked The Spirit Rebellion, more world building, a little more backstory plus mystery. I think the heist was a bit background to expanding the world and setting up the next book(maybe?). It was good enough that I will get to the next in the series sometime. I feel like the first story of Beacon 23 was the best, but all five parts were good. Finally our lone beacon operator gets some company, stuff happens some people die and an okay conclusion for a series of short stories that could have probably used something more added to it. Last book of August, The Remaining: Allegiance is book 5 of I guess a 6 book series. Since the author got a publishing deal in the middle of writing the series and it took extra time for this book to come out, I kind of forgot most of what happened in the previous books. So I spent the first 1/4 of the book trying to remember details of who was who, and what was going on. While there is action, it was really much more of a set up for the final book in the series. It was good and a lot better than much of the "zombie" books out there so I'll finish the series off later this year. Next up, I'm taking a swing at a few of the booklore challenges I have left. To that end, someone want to throw me a wildcard? Preferably available for the Kindle. Booklord Challenge 1. The vanilla read a set number of books in a year. 36/52 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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Sep 3, 2015 03:22
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Things are back to normal.  No new challenges completed this month, but lots of books.Someone wildcard me please. ltr posted:I liked The Spirit Rebellion, more world building, a little more backstory plus mystery. I think the heist was a bit background to expanding the world and setting up the next book(maybe?). It was good enough that I will get to the next in the series sometime. No maybe about it; The Spirit Rebellion and The Spirit Eater are where the overarching plot starts getting into gear and The Spirit War is where everything finally hits the fan. Rebellion is probably the weakest book in the series, which finishes extremely strong with War and End. quote:Next up, I'm taking a swing at a few of the booklore challenges I have left. To that end, someone want to throw me a wildcard? Preferably available for the Kindle. Pick one: Nonfiction: Ignition! An Informal History of Liquid Fuel Rocket Propellants by John D. Clark. Out of print, but available in PDF. (I'm working on cleaning up the PDF and generating an epub version, but it may not be ready this year. It's a big project.) Fiction: Black Sun Rising by C.S. Friedman Booklord Challenge Update posted:1. 75/96 books read; 14 nonfiction (19%), 25 rereads (33%) 59. David Starr, Space Ranger by Isaac Asimov 60. Lucky Starr and the Pirates of the Asteroids by Isaac Asimov (reread) 61. Lucky Starr and the Oceans of Venus by Isaac Asimov (reread) 62. Lucky Starr and the Sun of Mercury by Isaac Asimov (reread) 63. Lucky Starr and the Moons of Jupiter by Isaac Asimov (reread) 64. Lucky Starr and the Rings of Saturn by Isaac Asimov A series of kid's SF from the 50s, I had the middle four books growing up but never the first or last. Now I finally have all six, so it was time to read them. These were initially published as "Paul French" -- there was talk about making a TV series of them, and Asimov didn't want his name anywhere near television -- but he didn't try very hard to conceal who the author was, and after those plans were scrapped, later printings were under his own name. These versions have prefaces that the ones I had as a child lacked, discussing how our knowledge of the solar system has changed since these were written; for example, we now know that Venus has no oceans and Jupiter's moon Io is a volcanic hellhole rather than a relatively serene ball of methane snow. Re-reading them as an adult, two things in particular stood out: - There's a lot of science facts inserted into the narrative. It's hard to read these and not come away with at least some knowledge of astronomy, the solar system, and physics. And while they aren't always inserted particularly smoothly, they never bring the book to a grinding halt for a science lecture either. - There are no women. I don't just mean "all of the pro- and antagonists are male"; I mean in all six books the only female character who gets page time is an engineer's wife in Oceans of Venus, who has a line or two. Apart from that, there's a space pirate who mentions that some of them have wives and children back in the asteroids and...that's it. 65. Dream Park by Larry Niven (reread) 66. The Barsoom Project by Larry Niven (reread) The Dream Park books are basically commercial LARPing + murder mystery, but they predate organized LARPing (and indeed some modern LARP organizations take names and procedures from the Dream Park books!), and this being near-future SF, the game is augmented with holographic projections, force fields, and the like, with the GM controlling a multi-acre playing area and coordinating dozens of actors from a central control room. You end up with a sort of layer cake of plot, with the in-character progress of the game, out of character interactions between the players and NPCs, and murder investigation all occupying different layers -- and inevitably the murder investigation overlaps with the game in some manner. Dream Park and The Barsoom Project were rereads; Voodoo Game was new. And I didn't like it; I read a few chapters in and it completely failed to engage me. It leaves me wondering if the first two books would suffer the same fate if I were reading them for the first time now, rather than getting that hit of nostalgia when I open them up. 67. Stiff: the Curious Lives of Human Cadavers by Mary Roach This is not really a book about what happens to our bodies after we die -- chemically and biologically, I mean -- but about what people do with dead bodies. Some of the book is devoted to various forms of funeral rites, including a new and rather promising approach where they free-dry the corpse, pulverize it, put it in a biodegradable urn, and plant a tree over it, which sounds much more to my taste than either traditional cremation or being interred whole -- but most of it is about the medical and scientific uses to which we put human corpses. 68. The Girl with All the Gifts by M.R. Carey Recommended both in this thread and on IRC, recommendation was extremely solid. Loved it. As usual I don't have a lot to say about books I really liked. Even if you hate "zombie books" (and god knows there are enough terrible ones to make anyone hate them), this is worth picking up. 69. Feed by Seanan McGuire (as Mira Grant) 70. Deadline by Seanan McGuire (as Mira Grant) 71. Blackout by Seanan McGuire (as Mira Grant) After Stiff and Gifts I decided it was time to keep riding this corpse train and finally read McGuire's Newsflesh trilogy. These are more books with zombies but they aren't zombie books, if that makes sense; in this setting the zombie "apocalypse" happened ~25 years ago, and civilization didn't collapse, it just changed. Blood tests to get indoors, licensing (with mandatory firearm training and ownership) to travel in the countryside, and suchlike. As such, this is actually a political/conspiracy thriller in a post-zombie America. The computer security bits strained my suspension of disbelief a bit. If I were a virologist or biologist, the biology bits would probably strain it a lot. But despite that these books were fun as hell and I enjoyed every page. 72. San Diego 2014: The Last Stand of the California Browncoats by Seanan McGuire (as Mira Grant) A novella in the Newsflesh setting, detailing the first fully documented large-scale outbreak of the Kellis-Amberlee virus: San Diego Comic Con, 2014. Good, but you don't really have time to get fully invested in it before it's over, and if you've read the main Newsflesh books, you kind of don't want to, because you know how it ends. 73. Cold Magic by Kate Elliot 74. Cold Fire by Kate Elliot 75. Cold Steel by Kate Elliot Kate Elliot keeps coming up in recommendations, and I tried her Jaran books and did not like the first one. I decided to give her another try with the Spiritwalker trilogy, and while I liked it enough to read through it, I don't think I'd recommend it and I probably won't be reading any more of her work. The first book I found repeatedly jarring because I consistently failed to build a working mental model of most of the characters. I don't know if this is what actually happened, but it kind of felt like she wrote the book out of order, during which time her model of the characters changed, and then stitched it together, resulting in dramatic changes in tone even within a single scene. In the second and third books this largely goes away, revealing the other major problem I had with it: the main character never wins. In any conflict, the best she can hope for is to escape with her goals unmet. There is no ally who will not betray her, no protector who will not sacrifice her, and no safe haven that does not conceal an ambush. And this applies to everything from small verbal skirmishes to the climatic showdowns at the ends of books 1 and 2, where, for example, her starting goal is "take revenge on those who betrayed me", this gets quickly revised to "get my family out of here safely", and even at that she fails. It does actually end on a very upbeat and hopeful note, but it's a long and wearying grind to get there. ToxicFrog fucked around with this message at 18:02 on Sep 6, 2015 |
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Sep 3, 2015 13:16
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ToxicFrog posted:Things are back to normal. Read Theft: A Love Story by Peter Carey.
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Sep 3, 2015 20:45
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elbow posted:Ah, that doesn't bode well for me! I loved the movie and bought the graphic novels immediately after but haven't yet read them because they're so inconvenient to handle. Hope I enjoy them anyway. Sorry if I made you feel stink about buying them. If you already have the books, you may as well read them. If it's any help, remember this; at least they're not that Frank Miller book I mentioned.
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Sep 4, 2015 03:16
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Next set of reviews, up until the last book I read. #67: Barrayar - Lois McMaster Bujold: The Hugo-winning chronological sequel to 'Shards of Honour', and it's a whole lot better than the first book. Definitely a worthy Hugo winner. 5/5 #68: Suffragette - Mary M. Talbot: The story of a fictional British suffragette in the years prior to (and including) World War One. Well-written, well-drawn, worth a look if you're interested in feminist history. 4/5. #69: The Worrier's Guide to Life - Gemma Correll: A collection of comic drawings dealing with anxiety (and other things). A light read. 3/5. #70: Passport to Hell - Robin Hyde: A fictionalised re-telling of the adventures of a New Zealand soldier in World War One. An interesting book, but there is some racist language (including the n-word), because it was written in the '30s and civil rights hadn't happened yet. 4/5. #71: Angles of Attack - Marko Kloos: The third book in his military sci-fi series. The previous book in the series was nominated for a Best Novel Hugo Award by the (Sad/Rabid) Puppies, but Kloos withdrew from the Hugos, allowing The Three-Body Problem to enter (and eventually win). In that light, I was amused to see a semi-major Russian character turn out to be gay (see also: current Russian homophobia). I probably wouldn't nominate any of these books for a Hugo myself, but that doesn't mean that I didn't enjoy them (or that they're not worth reading if you like military sci-fi). At the very least, you could definitely do worse in the genre. 4/5. #72: Baldur's Gate II - Matt Bell: A very spoilery exploration of the titular game and an investigation of the author's relationship with D&D and general nerdery. Worth a read only if you've played the game (not kidding about the spoiler stuff, BTW) and can get it from a library. 3/5. #73: Who Fears Death - Nnedi Okorafor: A magical-realist story about a young woman in an area of post-apocalyptic West Africa. Well-written and definitely worth a look if you're interested in fantasy stories about non-white women. 4/5. #74: The Winter Boy - Sally Weiner Grotta: I decided to read this book because of a goon on Goodreads. I was not disappointed. It's a hard book to describe, but if you're interested in a fantasy book involving gender issues, it's worth a read. 4/5. #75: The Martian - Andy Weir: I decided to read this book because I wanted to see what the fuss was about. It's OK - it's not an all-time classic, but it's not horrible either. Yes, the protagonist is a huge dork, but you get used to that by the end of the book (if you have a tolerance for dorkiness, anyway). It's readable enough. 3/5. #76: Showa: A History of Japan, 1926-1939 - Shigeru Mizuki: In which a major manga author writes a history of Japan combined with autobiographical information. Heavily detailed (it's the first book in a series covering up until 1989), but a good read if you can get used to the manga style of reading right to left and if you're interested in Japanese history. 4/5. #77: My Grandfather Would Have Shot Me: A Black Woman Discovers Her Family's Nazi Past - Jennifer Teege: In which the granddaughter of Amon Goeth (a.k.a the Nazi played by Ralph Fiennes in Schindler's List) discusses her finding out about her familial history. Some parts of the book were more interesting than others, but I might watch Schindler's List at some point. 3/5. #78: The Disaster Artist: My Life Inside The Room, the Greatest Bad Movie Ever Made - Greg Sestero: In which Sestosterone talks about his relationship with Tommy Wiseau and his experience acting in The Room. I kind of felt a little bit sorry for Tommy Wiseau - I wouldn't be surprised if he was mentally ill in some way. It would explain some of his behaviour. I already knew some of the details prior to reading the book, but it was still an interesting read. 4/5. #79: Displacement: A Travelogue - Lucy Knisley: In which the author goes on a cruise with her elderly grandparents (one of whom has dementia). A meditation on mortality and travelling. 4/5. #80: Hebdomeros - Giorgio de Chirico: A Greek literature-inspired plotless surrealist ramble, but a decent, short read if you're into that sort of thing. 3/5. #81: Perdido Street Station - China Miéville: It's long. The first half is less interesting than the second half. I can kind of see why people complain about the ending. Despite those little nitpicks, I loved this book and I want to read more Miéville. I like American Gods, but I kinda wish this had won the Hugo Best Novel in 2002, because holy poo poo. 5/5. #82: The Warrior's Apprentice - Lois McMaster Bujold: The third Vorkosigan book, and the first to star its main character, Miles Vorkosigan. In the book, Miles finds himself the leader of a group of mercenaries and shenanigans happen. The level of interest fluctuates a little, but it's a good beginning point if you prefer male protagonists. 4/5. #83: Ms. Marvel, vol. 1: No Normal - G. Willow Wilson: Speaking of Hugos, this won the Best Graphic Novel at this year's awards. At the time of voting I hadn't read it, but I voted for it anyway because I'd heard good things about it and to send a middle finger to racists and misogynists. Now that I've read it, was it worthy of the award? Yes it was, haters to the left. To put it more objectively: the book was well-drawn, well-written and I'm probably going to check out future volumes. 4/5. Currently working my way through Hector Berlioz's memoirs (as in the composer).
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Sep 4, 2015 04:09
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August - 5: 33. Selected Poems (Edgar Allen Poe) 34. The Bookseller of Kabul (Asne Seierstad) 35. Long Walk to Freedom (Nelson Mandela) 36. We (Yevgeny Zamyatin) 37. The Bell Jar (Sylvia Plath) I read some Poe-try because the booklord challenge required it and my girlfriend had this collection lying around. What I learned is that I still don't have any interest in poetry. The Bookseller of Kabul was really interesting. Seierstad does a good job of distancing herself from the family she's writing about, and it's interesting to see the clash of attitudes and ideas in this Afghan family. The patriarch Sultan is outwardly educated, liberal and progressive (in the context of, y'know, Afghanistan) and yet his family is run on strict traditional lines and in his personal life he's a tiny autocrat. Long Walk to Freedom I doubt I can say much about that hasn't been said a hundred times before. I found it fascinating and it's interesting to see how much the South African Communist Party features in the narrative since that's sort of forgotten about when people talk about Mandela and the ANC these days (or maybe I just haven't ever heard much about him, which is also possible). We I really enjoyed. You can see the obvious influence it had on Brave New World and 1984. It's weak in some ways (the characters are pretty thin and the society as described doesn't seem to fit with the society as is revealed in the narrative) but it was interesting to think about and very prescient of how then-future totalitarian states functioned. The Bell Jar I read because my girlfriend loved. I don't think I liked it as much as she did, but it was still interesting and Plath draws out the descent into madness very well. It's interesting to see that Plath herself thought of it as being amateurish given how it's ended up being regarded in some circles. I've posted a little late in September and in that time I've read like 3 other books but I'll save them for next time. 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) 33. Selected Poems (Edgar Allen Poe) 34. The Bookseller of Kabul (Asne Seierstad) 35. Long Walk to Freedom (Nelson Mandela) 36. We (Yevgeny Zamyatin) 37. The Bell Jar (Sylvia Plath) Booklord categories: 2 - 11, 13 - 15, 18 - 22.
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Sep 7, 2015 20:59
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I haven't updated at all this year, so I'm just going to add a couple of the best books I've read so far. The rest are here. Pride and Prejudice, by Jane Austen - A classic romance which isn't sappy or trying at all. The characters were interesting and well developed, and it was really funny in parts. Collected Stories and Other Writings, by Katherine Anne Porter - This books consists of three parts, the short stories, some reviews of books and authors, and personal writings - her history, personal experiences and suchlike. The main highlight is obviously the short stories. They're well crafted and a few of the later ones blew me away. The difference you'll see between this book and just the short story collections is the reviews and personal writings. You'll feel like you almost sort of got to know her a bit. It's a long book, but rewarding experience. 1. The vanilla read a set number of books in a year. 3. The non-white author 6. An essay 8. Something post-modern 9. Something absurdist 10. The Blind Owl 14. Wildcard 16. That one book that has been sitting on your desk waiting for a long time 17. A play 18. Biography 22. A mystery I am much further behind than I thought I'd be by now, and that is with stretching the definition of a few of these. This is going to put a kink in my reading plans for the rest of the year. Oh well. Also, someone give me a wildcard book!
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Sep 8, 2015 01:26
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Fellwenner posted:Also, someone give me a wildcard book! Pulphead by John Jeremiah Sullivan
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Sep 8, 2015 04:27
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thespaceinvader posted:1: Cryptonomicon by Neal Stephenson Crossfire was mostly pretty enjoyable. Some nice characters, sfairly treated, some interesting aliens, but it was a little too light on its treatment of relativistic space travel and time dilation, and their impacts, I felt, and contained the single worst 'as you know' speech I've ever come across, which was incredibly out of character for the person concerned - a normally quiet and reserved Quaker - and literally started with the phrase "You already know this, I'm sure, but I'm going to tell you anyway." The information could easily have been written more carefully into the text. But I wasn't put off by it, and I found the conclusion satisfying, if a little... open. Moving on, I think I'm going to read the biography of Alexander Graham Bell I picked up on holiday.
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Sep 13, 2015 19:21
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Progress: 14 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 - Drabin In Love, from City of Saints and Madmen, Jeff Vandermeer. 1 out of 5 stars. Booklord Challenge 7 completed: Read a short story. 14. Station Eleven, by Emily St. John Mandel. 5 out of 5 stars. 15. Broken Monsters, Lauren Beukes. Very interesting blend of suspense, horror and - right at the very end - the supernatural. It's a gamble to take the twist Beukes did at the end, but I really liked it. The build-up was pretty long in the book, which is why I docked it one star, but then it all rushes to a gripping conclusion. I enjoyed the embedded commentary on modern Internet/media culture as well. Recommended. 4 out of 5 stars. 16. The Sixth Extinction: An Unnatural History, Elizabeth Kolbert. This could have been better. The author gives a good general overview of the damage we're doing to the environment, but she doesn't get very deep into the "why" of a lot of interesting topics. In the end it felt like a strung together travelouge of places we're screwing up, without much of a detailed dive. Kolbert is a good writer too, so this was disappointing. 3 out of 5 stars/ Booklord Challenge 8 completed: Read a book about hate. This is basically about how we're destroying the world and don't give a gently caress.
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Sep 19, 2015 13:27
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Someone wildcard me, been reading too many duds of late.
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Sep 20, 2015 12:50
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Over to You by Roald Dahl
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Sep 20, 2015 13:05
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High Warlord Zog posted:Over to You by Roald Dahl Not bad, but also not available at any of my libraries. I'd have to order it from the UK which is a pain in the butt. I'll add it to my list though. Anyone got something I can find? Argali fucked around with this message at 15:23 on Sep 20, 2015 |
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Sep 20, 2015 14:08
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Argali posted:Not bad, but also not available at any of my libraries. I'd have to order it from the UK which is a pain in the butt. I'll add it to my list though. Anyone got something I can find? Octavia Butler's Lilith's Brood. Somebody wildcard me now please.
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Sep 20, 2015 20:37
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Read the Dahl book.
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Sep 20, 2015 21:52
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| # ? Jun 6, 2024 13:18 |
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High Warlord Zog posted:Read the Dahl book.
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Sep 20, 2015 22:04
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