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Right, here's my update for most of January: The 2016 Book Lord Challenge 1) Vanilla Number: 6/40 2) Something written by a woman 3) Something Written by a nonwhite author 4) Something written in the 1800s - Three Men In A Boat by Jerome Klapka Jerome 5) Something History Related (fictional or non-fiction your choice) 6) A book about or narrated by an animal 7) A collection of essays. 8) A work of Science Fiction - Expanse 1-4 by James Corey 9) Something written by a musician 10) Read a long book, something over 500 pages 11) Read something about or set in NYC 12) Read Airplane fiction (Patterson, ect) - The Gun Seller by Hugh Laurie 13) Read Something YA 14) Wildcard! 15) Something recently published (up to a year. The year will be the day you start this challenge) 16) That one book you’ve wanted to read for a while now. 17) The First book in a series 18) A biography or autobiography 19) Read something from the lost generation (Fitzgerald, Hemmingway, ect.) or from the Beat Genneration 20) Read a banned book 21) A Short Story collection 22) It’s a Mystery. Three Men In A Boat, by Jerome Klapka Jerome (challenge: 1800s) - bit of a cheap shot since it's been the book of the month here and I've already read it so maybe I'll give this category another try later on. Nothing much to be said, it's one of the most beloved humorous books of all time and never really got old. 4/5. Leviathan Wakes, Caliban's War, Abaddon's Gate, Cibola Burn - the Expanse series by James Corey (challenge sci-fi, although that one I'd probably fill any way) - pretty fresh for a space opera and something I really wanted to get to reading earlier. Starts off with zombies in space but develops to have more political themes over time which makes for much more interesting reading. Sadly the main protagonist is about as interesting as a brick - there's potential for a quixotic idealist type IN SPACE but the books never really call him out on his naivete. Enjoyable relaxing read otherwise. 3/5. The Gun Seller by Hugh Laurie (challenge: airport fiction) - not gonna lie, the combination of a comedy actor writing a spy thriller thingie sounded better than most airport fiction normally (and I honestly have no idea if it even counts because it spoofs on the spy thriller almost as much as it tries to be one). It's got all the requisite pieces - conspiracies, shootouts, femme fatales, secret weapons, eeevil corporatons and so on - and runs it through the narration of a wisecracking hitman. It combines being engaging and funny in a pretty nice way, although the protagonist likes his philosophical asides a bit too much. Another bonus is that it's a book that deals with terrorism and was written before 9/11; interesting how our perspectives have changed. 2/5. anilEhilated fucked around with this message at 13:34 on Jan 22, 2016 |
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Jan 22, 2016 13:22
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I failed miserably last year, but I'm finally out of grad school and able to focus on this for a while! I'll be doing 60 books (hopefully more), as well as the Book Lord Challenge. I'm already friends with a lot of you on Goodreads, but here's my profile if you want to be my buddy: https://www.goodreads.com/user/show/638608-kate
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Jan 23, 2016 02:56
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thespaceinvader posted:1: Chimera by Mira Grant Overall, a very, very strong piece of fantasy fiction and one to which I'll definitely read the sequel.
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Jan 24, 2016 01:19
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I'm late to this challenge! I've tracked my reading for the last decade or so, and always have had "I want to read X number of books!" as my goal. Usually 50-100, depending on grad school workload. 2016, though? My goal is to spend 500 hours reading. I've written off some longer works in order to get my annual count higher, and want to read some Dostoevsky, Tolstoy, and denser historical / non-fiction books. I log my time reading using AtrackerPro (a time management app) and in a spreadsheet.
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Jan 24, 2016 06:15
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I'm kind of late, I'm doing a challenge of reading 30 books in 2016. I'm currently finishing a trilogy so I'll update when I've read it. My Goodreads profile https://www.goodreads.com/user/show/46674092-laura-v
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Jan 25, 2016 22:53
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I'm off to a good start for the year! Here is my January: 1) The All-Girl Filling Station's Last Reunion - Fannie Flagg: She writes wonderful southern characters, and this book did not disappoint. It was also interesting learning about the female pilots that worked during WWII. 2) Book of a Thousand Days - Shannon Hale: I loved this. It's a re-imagining of an obscure Grimms fairy tale set against a vaguely Mongolian cultural background. A quick, charming read. I highly recommend it. 3) Outlander - Diana Gabaldon: I finally gave in and read this after having it recommended to me umpteen million times. I'm not sure what to think. It was ok, though the constant sex scenes got tedious quickly, not to mention the interminable section about various characters receiving beatings. The time travel aspect is interesting, but I'm not sure if I want to do a whole series of these. I'll probably give the 2nd one a try in a couple of months. 4) Agnes Grey - Anne Brontë: I really liked this, though it fell a little short of what it could have been. I've heard her other book is better so I will give that one a try. Still a big Brontë fan overall. 5) The Corinthian - Georgette Heyer: This was just ok. It was a little too implausible for the time it was supposed to be set in. 6) Definitely Dead (Sookie Stackhouse #6) - Charlaine Harris: Totally divergent from the show, in a good way. I'm really liking this series and will probably finish them all this year. 7) Redeemer: The Life of Jimmy Carter - Randall Balmer: This was not good. I picked it because it was published recently so I figured it would have a bunch of Carter's post-presidential life included. It was barely a bio of him at all. The author clearly wanted to write about how the apolitical progressive evangelicals of the 70's became the politicized Religious Right they are today, and apparently thought that more people would read it if he tied it into a Carter bio. It was somewhat interesting, but not at all what I was looking for. 8) The Life-Changing Magic of Tidying Up - Marie Kondō: I'm usually not a self-help book reader, but I love decluttering and organizing so I picked this up. The author is a bit kooky and there are some tips I definitely will not be taking (saying thank you to my shoes after taking them off each day, greeting my house when I get home) but there are some really good ideas in it, especially when it comes to determining what is actually worth keeping, and how to best store the stuff you have. 9) Three-Ten to Yuma and Other Stories - Elmore Leonard: A little book of short westerns. I really enjoyed these. 10) The Emperor of All Maladies: A Biography of Cancer - Siddhartha Mukherjee: Exactly what the title says. It read very quickly for a medicine-related book. The author did a good job balancing the denser scientific explanations with anecdotes and history. 11) The Talented Mr. Ripley - Patricia Highsmith: Way, way better than the movie. Loved it, though I think I'm done with Ripley. I liked the ending and probably won't go on with the sequels. 12) Euphoria - Lily King: The story of three anthropologists in New Guinea in the 30's. This started off strong but sort of fizzled at the end. 13) All Together Dead (Sookie Stackhouse #7) - Charlaine Harris: This was supposed to be for Feb but I finished it quickly. Still very good. Subchallenges! For the A-Z challenge I decided to go in alphabetical order to make it a little more challenging (the and a don't count): A: The All-Girl Filling Station's Last Reunion B: Book of a Thousand Days C: The Corinthian D: Definitely Dead E: Euphoria Booklord: Written by a woman: The Life-Changing Magic of Tidying Up Written by a non-white author: Emperor of All Maladies Written in the 1800's: Agnes Grey First book in a series: Outlander Biography or autobiography: Redeemer: The Life of Jimmy Carter Short stories: Three-Ten to Yuma and other Stories Overall: Total: 13/100 A-Z Challenge: 5/26 Booklord Challenge: 6/22 Presidential Biographies: 1/6
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Jan 26, 2016 22:08
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6) Les Misérables - Victor Hugo: I bought a copy of this book after the 2012 movie (of the musical) came out, and after 3 years I've finally got around to reading it. The musical hits the main plot points, but the book fleshes out the characters (such as Thénardier, who has a much bigger role in the book). I read the unabridged version, so I had to read a lot of extraneous digressions, most of which I skimmed over, but the plot stuff was much more interesting. The one bit which really irritated me was a passage where, in describing Cosette playing with a doll, Victor Hugo outright says that childless women are 'unnatural'. Even taking into account vintage sexism, I don't read books to be insulted. On the whole: 3.5 (4) / 5. 7) The Golden Fool - Robin Hobb: Continuing the story in the second FitzChivalry trilogy in the Farseer series. An improvement over Fool's Errand (the first book), in that there was more going on and there was also some crossover with the characters from Bingtown (from the Liveships trilogy). 4/5. 8) How to Suppress Women's Writing - Joanna Russ: A book detailing the ways in which women's writing gets dismissed / excluded from the canon of Literature. An illuminating read, and well worth a look. 5/5. 9) Enlightened Sexism: The Seductive Message that Feminism's Work is Done - Susan J. Douglas: An examination of sexist attitudes expressed in media. Rather lightweight, albeit with some interesting parts (e.g. discussions of racism). 3/5. 10) I Call Myself A Feminist: The View from Twenty-Five Women Under Thirty - Victoria Pepe, Rachel Holmes, Amy Annette, Martha Mosse, Alice Stride: A book of essays from a group of (varying degrees of) young women about the necessity of feminism (in a nutshell). I enjoyed reading this book more than the Douglas, if only because the writers were closer to my age. 4/5. Currently reading: The Warden - Anthony Trollope. Reading next: City of Stairs - Robert Jackson Bennett.
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Jan 27, 2016 00:54
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Here's my January update before I forget. 1. Modern Romance by Aziz Ansari- Very enjoyable and I found the research very interesting. 2. Ancillary Justice by Anne Leckie (science fiction)- Great start to a sci-fi series. It's especially interesting because the main characters inhabits more than one body at once, which makes for an interesting perspective. 3. Notorious RBG by Irin Carmon (by a woman)- This book is amazing. I'm a huge RBG fan, so I was bound to like it. 4. Super Mario: How Nintendo Conquered America by Jeff Ryan 5. A Thousand Splendid Suns by Khaled Hosseini (non-white author)- The most depressing book I have ever read.
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Jan 28, 2016 01:22
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Namirsolo posted:Here's my January update before I forget. Is this any good? It's been languishing on my wishlist for a long while.
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Jan 28, 2016 01:58
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ZakAce posted:6) Les Misérables - Victor Hugo: I bought a copy of this book after the 2012 movie (of the musical) came out, and after 3 years I've finally got around to reading it. The musical hits the main plot points, but the book fleshes out the characters (such as Thénardier, who has a much bigger role in the book). I read the unabridged version, so I had to read a lot of extraneous digressions, most of which I skimmed over, but the plot stuff was much more interesting. The one bit which really irritated me was a passage where, in describing Cosette playing with a doll, Victor Hugo outright says that childless women are 'unnatural'. Even taking into account vintage sexism, I don't read books to be insulted. On the whole: 3.5 (4) / 5. I really liked a lot of Les Mis but omg that 100pp section about Waterloo.
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Jan 28, 2016 02:23
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nerdpony posted:I really liked a lot of Les Mis but omg that 100pp section about Waterloo. so you were defeated and they won the war? or you couldn't escape if you wanted to?
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Jan 28, 2016 02:26
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Mel Mudkiper posted:so you were defeated and they won the war? or you couldn't escape if you wanted to? It's more that that history book on the shelf is always repeating itself.
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Jan 28, 2016 03:12
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I'm not gonna finish my first book before january ends. I've still got somewhere between 400 and 500 pages to go, but I'll update as soon as I'm done.
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Jan 28, 2016 10:16
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My goal was 30 books, and I'm already 5 down so it may have been a tad of an underestimate. Oh well, would rather overachieve than the opposite! Read a total of 2341 pages (not counting being a bit into my next novel), for an average of 78 pages/day. 1) Vanilla Number: 2) Something written by a woman - The Handmaids Tale 3) Something Written by a nonwhite author 4) Something written in the 1800s 5) Something History Related (fictional or non-fiction your choice) - A Travelers history of Southeast Asia 6) A book about or narrated by an animal 7) A collection of essays. - Alien Hand Syndrome (I'm going to count this as essays when in reality technically they're articles) 8) A work of Science Fiction 9) Something written by a musician 10) Read a long book, something over 500 pages - Gone with the Wind (Over a thousand pages, gently caress you challenge) 11) Read something about or set in NYC 12) Read Airplane fiction (Patterson, ect) 13) Read Something YA - Guards, Guards, Guards! (Pratchett is YA, right?) 14) Wildcard! 15) Something recently published (up to a year. The year will be the day you start this challenge) 16) That one book you’ve wanted to read for a while now. 17) The First book in a series 18) A biography or autobiography 19) Read something from the lost generation (Fitzgerald, Hemmingway, ect.) or from the Beat Genneration 20) Read a banned book 21) A Short Story collection 22) It’s a Mystery. Gone with the Wind: Not sure I need to explain what this is about, given it's one of the most well read American novels. I loved it. The actual love story is mediocre to ok, but the setting and incredible insight into the antebellum south is absolutely breathetaking to an American from the north. It's an amazing look that isn't pulling any punches - people are lovely and the book doesn't excuse them, instead just showing how people thought during the time period regardless of how it would be viewed now. The characters themselves are interesting too. Scarlett is a great flawed character with her inconsistently, selfishness, and vanity but her pragmatism still keeps her relatively likable. I wasn't as sold on Rhett as a character until the end, but all of a sudden he clicked to me and I saw his motivations so much better and he felt so much more developed. I never once got bored reading this, despite knocking out all thousand pages over a 5 day span. 5/5 Alien Hand Syndrome: About as polar opposite as you can get from GwtW. A relatively quick read that is composed of a serious of articles from the drat Interesting webpage. It is debatable if it really counts as a book, but I'm counting it because I read every word of the 250 pages. The book was interesting though, as I found that probably 2/3rds of the articles drew me in and made me learn something I never knew or had thought about before. Don't know that I would have read it if it wasn't a christmas gift, but it was enjoyable enough. 3/5 The Handmaids Tale: I have been meaning to read this for ages, but honestly it wasn't very good. The writing style grates really hard on me and while I understood and the motivation behind the style, it still lowered the quality of the book for me. As for the content itself, it felt a lot like a feminist bogeyman. I know that to an extent it's intended to be a ''what if we take fundamentalism to its logical conclusion", but I could never get into it given how laughable a lot of it was. It never felt like it was a situation that could plausibly exist, and the book never explained how we got to that point. None of the characters were developed or interesting, not even the main character that we see through. I really do understand and see what Atwood was going for, but it didn't make for a good read. 2/5 A Travelers history of Southeast Asia: A relatively dry history of all of southeast asia from prehistoric times until 2010. I'm currently living in the region so I picked this up to try and get a bit of background before I moved there. It was exactly what you'd expect - a dry history book. I learned a lot, but I wouldn't call it a page turner. 3/5 Guards, Guards, Guards!: I have read a few Pratchett novels before and always have found that hilarious and thought provoking, but lacking characterization and any sense of drama. Guards was no shift from that, though it was my favorite Discworld series I have read to do (and I think is generally considered to be one of the better ones). Some of the conversations and odds and dragons and the city of Ankh-Morpork were legitimately hillarious and I had no problem finishing the novel, though it really could have done with a greater sense of stakes. Would recommend as an intro to Discworld, as it feels like the best I've read but still representative of the series as a whole. 4/5
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Jan 28, 2016 10:23
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Dienes posted:Bloodchild and Other Stories by Octavia Butler Oh hell yes. Thanks for the awesome pick. Jan Books: 1) Yes Please! - Amy Poehler 2) The Life-Changing Magic of Tidying - Marie Kondo 3) Watercolours - Curtis Tappenden Loved the Marie Kondo book. I can see why its become such a phenomenon. And Yes Please! was fun and a pretty quick read. I read it early in the month and I've already forgotten most of it though unfortunately, so I can't say it was all that memorable. Categories fulfilled: 3/22 * Book by a non-white author * An autobiography * Book written by a woman My goodreads.
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Jan 28, 2016 14:14
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Pretty sure I won't finish any more books in January, so here's where I'm at. 1) The Writer's Notebook - Tin House 2) Eileen - Ottessa Moshfegh - A very dark and atmospheric coming of age tale about a young woman escaping her bleak existence anchored by her alcoholic and verbally abusive father. Has some quite hitchcockian identity and suspense stuff going on. 5/5. 3) Animal Farm - George Orwell - I somehow missed out on this in middle and high school. Pretty solid. Fuckin' Napoleon. I identify with the cat. 5/5 4) Sin & Syntax - Constance Hale - A pretty straightforward grammar and writing technical guide. Was a nice refresher on how to pay attention and how to write. 5/5 5) Inferno (A Poet's Novel) - Eileen Myles - Some of the most propulsive prose I've ever read. She's just so magnetically conversational. A great picture of a poet's life in New York from a voice that's canonically marginalized. 5/5 6) Binary Star - Sarah Gerard - A beautifully written account of a toxic relationship burning out amidst a road trip. Highly recommended. 5/5 7) Nine Stories - J. D. Salinger - I missed out on Catcher in the Rye in HS, too. These occasionally seemed to serve as mouthpieces to spout philosophy, but I dug it. My favorites were A Perfect Day for Bananafish and The Laughing Man. 5/5 Relevant Booklord Categories: 1) Vanilla Number: 7/52 2) Book by a Woman - Eileen 3) Nonwhite Author - Eileen (Author is half-Iranian? I'll be reading at least 12 more in this category anyway if this is divisive.) 6) Animal Subject or Narrator - Animal Farm 7) Collection of Essays - The Writer's Notebook 11) About or Set in NYC - Inferno (A Poet's Novel) 15) Recently Published - Eileen (August 2015) 21) Short Story Collection - Nine Stories And on my personal challenge: 4/26 female authors 1/13 authors of color Are we counting Memoir as fulfilling the Biography/Autobiography category or no? marblize fucked around with this message at 00:10 on Jan 29, 2016 |
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Jan 28, 2016 21:54
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I may finish one more book, but I doubt it. I am way ahead of my goal, but I don't think I can keep this pace up. Was a good month for reading even though I was critical of some highly praised books, I still enjoyed reading them. Station Eleven by Emily St. John Mandel I like this book a lot. It was an interesting story that wove a bunch off stories of people together that I thought worked well. One Hundred Years of Solitude by Gabriel García Márquez I am kind of surprised I didn’t like this book. I like stories of small towns and the people that live them. I just got bored of the writing style. The first half of the book was good and I flew through it, but it turned in to a grind and went on too long in my opinion. People love this book and I can see why, it just didn’t capture me like I thought it would. The Devil in the White City by Eric Larson This was a good book, I enjoyed the history lesson and the small role the serial killer part played. I wasn’t really in to the architecture parts of the book though. My Name is Lucy Barton by Elizabeth Strout Short and not very interesting. I read this in one sitting and it is like a short story in each page. I guess it was more like two people are just chatting and you’re listening in and have no idea the context of a lot of it. It’s about a woman in the hospital after having complications from minor surgery. Her mom, who she hasn’t seen or talked to in years visits and they talk. It may be better than I thought looking back on it. It was very different from her other books. City of Stairs by Robert Jackson Bennet I wasn’t in to this. A Confederacy of Dunces byJohn Kennedy Toole There are a lot of moments in this book that I laughed out loud but overall it felt repetitive and long. The Call of the Wild by Jack London Good, I like dogs, it fulfilled my animal book requirement, I read it in one sitting, and it was a great story. Wasn’t sure about the last third, but the writing was great and the point of view of the dog was neat. Warlock by Oakley Hall Such a great book, highlight of the month and probably now one of my favorite books. There were a few parts in this book that just devastated me and I realized how attached I was to even the McQuown outlaws. It’s a retelling of the old western classic. Awesome. The Sun Also Rises by Ernest Hemmengway I enjoyed it, not much to say about the story, but the writing was great and I loved the characters. Categories completed: Something written by a woman Something History Related A book about or narrated by an animal Something recently published Read something from the lost generation My goodreads Rusty fucked around with this message at 03:42 on Jan 31, 2016 |
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Jan 29, 2016 00:45
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I'm off to a good start. Besides the six books I read this month, I'm about 600 pages into my 1,000 page wildcard. In January, I read: Paula Hawkins - The Girl on the Train (Takes care of the airport fiction challenge. I can see why people refer to this as the 'next Gone Girl' since it has a similar suspense feel with an unreliable narrator. Not bad for what it was.) Charlie Demers - The Horrors (A great, hilarious collection of essays [another Booklord Challenge down] from a comedian and writer who I love.) RA Dickey - Wherever I Wind Up (RA is a cool pitcher keeping a weird rear end pitch alive. This book covers his career and the struggles of being called up to the majors and being sent back to the minors over and over again, while also getting into some dark stuff about being sexually abused as a kid. Solid book, and covers the Bio/Autobiography challenge) Lori Shenher - That Lonely Section of Hell: The Botched Investigation of a Serial Killer Who Almost Got Away (I'm a sucker for pretty much anything related to true crime. This is a book about the investigation and subsequent arrest of Robert Pickton, a pig farmer from BC who likely killed about 4 dozen sex workers. It's written by one of the lead investigators from Vancouver PD and it was really interesting, and frustrating, to read about the red tape and fuckups that likely led to even more women dying. There's another book about this case that I might read this year, but this one was pretty heavy as it is.) Emily V Gordon - Super You (My fiancee picked this up and I read it because I knew the author from podcasts/her TV work. Not for me, it was sort of a self-help/"adulting" book written with geeky girls in mind as the audience. It does take care of the BLC around a book published within the last year.) Richard Hell - I Dreamed I Was a Very Clean Tramp (A mediocre memoir from the man behind one of my favorite albums of all-time. If you ever wanted to know the floor plan of every apartment Hell lived in in NYC, this is the book for you. Musician challenge finished.) Booklord Challenge progress: 1) Vanilla Number (currently at 6 of 40) 2) 15 books written by women (currently at 3 of 15) 3) Something written by a nonwhite author 4) Something written in the 1800s 5) Something History Related 6) A book about or narrated by an animal 8) A work of Science Fiction 10) Read a long book, something over 500 pages 11) Read something about or set in NYC 13) Read Something YA 14) Wildcard! 16) That one book you’ve wanted to read for a while now. 17) The First book in a series 19) Read something from the lost or beat generation 20) Read a banned book 21) A Short Story collection 22) It’s a Mystery Hoping to keep up the pace in February. I generally read more in the winter because I'm not biking to work, and there's no baseball to watch.
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Jan 29, 2016 01:31
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Here's my January poo poo: Bender by Dean Young. This is a a collection of poems by umm Dean Young, who is a Currently Living Poet. I thought they were pretty good, sorta funny at times. A cool thing is that his poems are arranged alphabetically, instead of chronologically/structurally/any other stupid system. why not? Between Parenthesis by Roberto Bolano. Essays by the master. There's a whole shitload of them that he wrote in like 5 years, whilst writing 2666, so thematically the essays sort of overlap. he has certain subjects he continually returns to, but the subjects are cool. It made me want 2 read a shitload of spanish language stuff. Some of the stuff he recommended sounded soooo cool; but when I looked it up on Amazon it hadn't been translated to English yet, which, as an American used to having My Way, felt like freaking bullshit. Middlemarch by George Eliot. It's a total masterpiece, the best book I've read since I read The Savage Detectives, probably on my shortlist of fave novels, wow how cool. Auschwitz and After by Charlotte Delbo. Poems & prose poems & prose about living in Auschwitz and what life was like after. good. Rashomon and Seventeen Other Stories by Ryonosuke Akutagawa. Stories that range from all (2?) periods of his career. The best stories are the early ones, they are ironic feudal japan stuff. the late stories are all about a thirty something dude being depressed and hating everyone for no reason, so I thought they were a little boring. If i want to read about someone who's depressed, i can just get on this dang website!! Darkness at Noon by Arthur Koestler. Good book about living through a COmmunist show trial, and then being executed at the end, so not really living thru it. If you read this book, and like it, watch the movie The Confession by Costa-Gavras for basically a filmic version of the same thing.
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Jan 29, 2016 02:15
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Okay; update through January: 1. White Line Fever by Lemmy Kilmister. His autobiography, published in 2002; starting off the year with this seemed like a no-brainer choice given that he passed away just a few days before. Very readable, told in a chatty style with plenty of self-irony. Sex, drugs and rock'n'roll, especially drugs. All the drugs. 2. Slåttekar i himmelen by Edvard Hoem. (Title would translate as "Harvestman in Heaven".) Hoem has been a big important Norwegian author for the past 40 years or so and I've only read a little of his stuff before. Got this book for Christmas; and it turned out to be extremely my thing. It is a semi-biographical novel about the author's own great-grandfather and his extended family, taking place in the 1870s, 1880s and 1890s; it doesn't qualify as a biography or as non-fiction due to a paucity of known facts about these people but the author has taken pains to make the story conform to what facts are known -- births, deaths, marriages, emigration, etc. It is a very introspective and... I would say lyrical look into the lives of some relatively ordinary Norwegians a century before my birth; additionally, it takes place one or two fjords over from where I grew up (apart from the bits that follow people who emigrate to the Americas). Places I've been to repeatedly, local history up the wazoo, people that might just as easily have been my own great-grandparents, etc. Basically, this novel sings the song of my people, and it sings it beautifully. There are hardships and sorrows but it's also full of joy and love. 3. Half the World by Joe Abercrombie. #2 in a series of ostensibly young-adult fantasy (read #1 last year, will be reading #3 later). Abercrombie is already one of my favourite nerd-genre authors, I've read all his previous stuff, and the main indication that this is supposedly "young adult" is a bit less foul language, slightly less graphic violence (but still lots of blood), and younger protagonists. Enjoyed this quite a lot, it's basically the Viking Age all over again in far-future post-apocalyptic Europe (if you pay attention). 4. Three Men in a Boat by Jerome K. Jerome. (Technically not quite done with this yet but will be this weekend). Picked it up because it was BOTM for January and also it's been on the long long list of books I've known about and wanted to read for a very long time, since there are references to it all over the place. A very smooth and easy read with a great deal of funny bits. Booklord challenge: 1) Vanilla Number - 4/40 2) Something written by a woman 3) Something Written by a nonwhite author 4) Something written in the 1800s - Three Men in a Boat 5) Something History Related (fictional or non-fiction your choice) - Slåttekar i himmelen 6) A book about or narrated by an animal 7) A collection of essays. 8) A work of Science Fiction 9) Something written by a musician - White Line Fever 10) Read a long book, something over 500 pages 11) Read something about or set in NYC 12) Read Airplane fiction (Patterson, ect) 13) Read Something YA - Half the World 14) Wildcard! 15) Something recently published (up to a year. The year will be the day you start this challenge) - Half the World 16) That one book you’ve wanted to read for a while now. - Three Men in a Boat 17) The First book in a series 18) A biography or autobiography - White Line Fever 19) Read something from the lost generation (Fitzgerald, Hemmingway, ect.) or from the Beat Genneration 20) Read a banned book 21) A Short Story collection 22) It’s a Mystery. Additional individual challenge: Norwegians: 1/10 Non-fiction: 1/5 Max re-reads: 0/5 Off to a decent start; I'm going to let myself count the same book for more than one points in the challenge if applicable (but also list multiple matches).
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Jan 29, 2016 16:33
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January~ 1. The Grapes of Wrath - John Steinbeck A classic for all the right reasons, Grapes of Wrath tells the story of the Joad family, an Oklahoma farming family kicked off their land and forced to travel to California to try to find a living. Steinbeck alternates between the story of the Joads and chapters that take a broader view of the crisis, often veering into editorializing - but it's earned, as the conditions that folks like the Joads faced were downright deplorable. Steinbeck is one of my favorite authors, and though this isn't my favorite of his books, it does give a good reason why I love him. 2. The Mark and The Void - Paul Murray A humorous book about Claude Martingale, a banker who's being stalked by an author - named Paul Murray, at that - who wants to write a book about the banking crisis, with Claude the main character. While international banking might not be the most thrilling subject in the world, the weird humor of the situation as Murray insinuates himself further into his character's life becomes more and more ridiculous. Murray's previous novel, Skippy Dies, is an all-time favorite of mine, and while this doesn't quite match that book's hilarity or pathos, it's a fun read. 3. Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban - J.K. Rowling This is probably the eighth time I've read these books, but this time around I'm reading them aloud to my son (who's currently 3 months old, so he's not exactly absorbing the story). Still, I love these books, and it's an interesting change of pace to be reading this aloud. 4. The Wake - Paul Kingsnorth A truly unique book about Englishmen at the time of William the Conqueror - the protagonist, Buccmaster, is trying to retake England from the French forces that are occupying it and changing its culture for the worse (at least in his eyes). It's a difficult read at first - the entire book, told from Buccmaster's point of view, is written in a dialect of Old English that can be dense and tough to understand, but once you get the hang of it you're really drawn in. Fantastic book, and definitely The Best Book of the Month. 5. Gumption: Relighting the Torch of Freedom with America's Gutsiest Troublemakers - Nick Offerman If you know Nick Offerman, you've probably got a good idea what this book'll be like. He writes interesting essays about Americans he admires - from Washington and Franklin and Douglass to Yoko Ono, Michael Pollan, and Willie Nelson - and for the most part it's a pretty entertaining read. 6. Assassin’s Quest (Farseer Trilogy #3) - Robin Hobb I read the Farseer trilogy a long time back - I think probably high school or middle school - and decided to revisit it recently. It's a much more personal and less fantastical type of fantasy than I'm used to - lots of court intrigue, not much magic until near the end, and it's all told from the POV of one character, so it's a smaller scale than something like ASOIAF. It doesn't hesitate to get depressing and dark, either. While this wasn't my favorite fantasy series, it was a nice change of pace from other entries in the genre. I plan to read most of the rest of Hobb's books set in this world - there are over 15 so far - and that's a project I'm willing to undertake. 7. Moby Dick - Herman Melville A classic I haven't read since undergrad, Moby Dick was a challenge to take on - mostly because almost a third of the book is Melville/Ishmael telling you everything that is known about the whale at the time of publishing, and it can get somewhat dry, though with clever metaphors and insights scattered throughout. There's not much plot, but the characters like Ahab, Stubb, Starbuck, and Queequeg are fantastic - Ahab gives astounding speeches, and Stubb often keeps the mood from getting too dour - and the final chase of the whale in the last few pages is gripping as hell. 8. Wild Swans: Three Daughters of China - Jung Chang An interesting memoir about the writer's family - focusing mostly on her grandmother, her mother, and herself - in China over the course of most of the 20th century, through the rise of Communism and the rule of Mao. I'd been curious about things like the Great Leap Forward and the Cultural Revolution, and this book showed very well their effects on a single family. Very good read if you're interested in recent history that doesn't get a whole lot of attention. 1) Vanilla Number (8/52) 2) Something written by a woman (Rowling, Hobb, Chang) 3) Something Written by a nonwhite author (Chang) 4) Something written in the 1800s - Moby Dick 5) Something History Related - Wild Swans 6) A book about or narrated by an animal - Moby Dick 7) A collection of essays. - Gumption 8) A work of Science Fiction 9) Something written by a musician 10) Read a long book, something over 500 pages - Moby Dick, The Grapes of Wrath, Assassin's Quest 11) Read something about or set in NYC 12) Read Airplane fiction (Patterson, ect) 13) Read Something YA - Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban 14) Wildcard! 15) Something recently published - The Mark and the Void (March 2015) 16) That one book you’ve wanted to read for a while now. 17) The First book in a series 18) A biography or autobiography - WIld Swans 19) Read something from the lost generation (Fitzgerald, Hemmingway, ect.) or from the Beat Generation 20) Read a banned book - The Grapes of Wrath 21) A Short Story collection 22) It’s a Mystery. I also just realized I never posted my December books in the last thread, but oh well, I shouldn't dig it up just for that reason.
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Jan 29, 2016 23:59
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January: I didn't get to read as much as I would have liked due to taking some unforeseen online classes. Still finished a few though and am making headway through The Brothers Karamzov. 1. Samurai! - Marten Caiden and Saburo Sakai An interesting look into the experiences of a Japanese fighter ace during WWII. I greatly enjoyed it. 2. American Gods - Neil Gaiman A novel in which all mythical creatures and gods exist due to human worship and thought of them. I had heard about this book long before I decided to read it and found it lived up to my expectations. It was greatly entertaining. 3. About Time: 12 Short Stories - Jack Finney A collection of short stories all centered around time travel. Some of the stories were pretty bad, but the good ones redeemed it overall. 1) Vanilla Number 2) Something written by a woman 3) Something Written by a nonwhite author 4) Something written in the 1800s 5) Something History Related (fictional or non-fiction your choice) - Samurai! 6) A book about or narrated by an animal 7) A collection of essays. 8) A work of Science Fiction 9) Something written by a musician 10) Read a long book, something over 500 pages 11) Read something about or set in NYC 12) Read Airplane fiction (Patterson, ect) 13) Read Something YA - 14) Wildcard! 15) Something recently published (up to a year. The year will be the day you start this challenge) 16) That one book you’ve wanted to read for a while now. 17) The First book in a series 18) A biography or autobiography 19) Read something from the lost generation (Fitzgerald, Hemmingway, ect.) or from the Beat Generation 20) Read a banned book 21) A Short Story collection - About Time: 12 Short Stories 22) It’s a Mystery. Chekans 3 16 fucked around with this message at 04:56 on Mar 1, 2016 |
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Jan 30, 2016 00:38
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Quandary posted:The Handmaids Tale: I have been meaning to read this for ages, but honestly it wasn't very good. The writing style grates really hard on me and while I understood and the motivation behind the style, it still lowered the quality of the book for me. As for the content itself, it felt a lot like a feminist bogeyman. I know that to an extent it's intended to be a ''what if we take fundamentalism to its logical conclusion", but I could never get into it given how laughable a lot of it was. It never felt like it was a situation that could plausibly exist, and the book never explained how we got to that point. None of the characters were developed or interesting, not even the main character that we see through. I really do understand and see what Atwood was going for, but it didn't make for a good read. Though I enjoyed the book for what it was, I certainly had a lot of criticism for it. The New York Times had a really good review of it that summed up a lot of my frustrations. You may enjoy taking a look: http://www.nytimes.com/books/00/03/26/specials/mccarthy-atwood.html
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Jan 30, 2016 02:53
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Gertrude Perkins posted:Is this any good? It's been languishing on my wishlist for a long while. It's pretty well-written, but up until '98, it doesn't really have any information that I haven't seen in a bunch of other sources. It's great for the more modern insight, though.
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Jan 30, 2016 04:11
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Blind Sally posted:Though I enjoyed the book for what it was, I certainly had a lot of criticism for it. The New York Times had a really good review of it that summed up a lot of my frustrations. You may enjoy taking a look: http://www.nytimes.com/books/00/03/26/specials/mccarthy-atwood.html Thanks for posting this - sums up a lot of the thoughts I had in a much more clear manner.
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Jan 30, 2016 04:23
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January - 8: 1. Death and the Penguin (Andrey Kurkov) 2. Kitchen (Banana Yoshimoto) 3. Sky Burial (Xinran) 4. The Shining (Stephen King) 5. Come As You Are: The Story of Nirvana (Michael Azerrad) 6. A Case of Exploding Mangoes (Mohammed Hanif) 7. A Visit from the Goon Squad (Jennifer Egan) 8. King of the World (David Remnick) A flying start to the year. I lucked out with having a few days off in January and then being away for work which meant I had literally nothing to do except run and read, and since the weather was goddamn abysmal for two days I ended up mostly reading. I've also through various machinations gotten a good start on the booklord this year. Death and the Penguin is the second Kurkov I've read, after liberating a copy of Case of the General's Thumb from my old workplace in 2014. I think this is the better known of his books and I liked it more - I think maybe I got the humour better this time, which helped. A book with a good sense of the absurd. Kitchen (in my edition anyway) contains two Yoshimoto stories, Kitchen and Moonlight Shadow. Kitchen in part has a lot to say about the trans identity of one of the central characters, and the emotional fallout after two people find themselves alone in the world. Moonlight Shadow has similarish themes, but is a bit more of a straightforward story about grief. Sky Burial I didn't know much about (I had it filed in the fiction section when it's purportedly biographical). It combines a very sweet story about Shu Wen, who goes off to Tibet to try and find her lost husband, with a pretty interesting description of the way of life of rural Tibet in the period of the current Chinese occupation. The Shining I saw in film form maybe 7-8 years ago now and I've always meant to read. I bought the book around the time Doctor Sleep came out on a whim (I think I saw it in Tesco of all places) and then it's patiently sat on the shelf through two house moves and three jobs. I finally got around to reading it and really enjoyed myself. It's very different to the film, but fascinating in its own way, and does a good job of building up the horror of the Overlook and its history. Come as You Are was written in the early 90s and is made up largely of Azerrad's interviews with the band put into the context of the events around them. I liked it, but there's a definite sense of Nirvana's (and particularly Kurt's) own mythmaking being taken at face value - there's points where one person is quoted saying something, and Azerrad includes a quote from someone else basically saying "bullshit," but there's a lot of stuff which kinda goes unchallenged which ran counter to what I'd read in Heavier than Heaven a few years ago. The parts at the end are funny in retrospect, with Dave Grohl mentioning that "one day" he'd like to be in a band and write and sing his own songs. It did remind me that Kurt was kind of an arsehole. A Case of Exploding Mangoes I found in a second-hand English bookshop in Munich run by a nice old American guy. The base outline is that it's about the death of General Zia ul-Haq, the real-life dictator of Pakistan through the late 70s and most of the 80s, in a plane crash which is still unexplained. It's a sort of Pakistani Catch-22 (and one of the criticisms I'd have of it is that particularly in the middle it's very conscious of that), told non-linearly. Parts of it were really funny, some of it was dark as gently caress and there was a surprisingly well-handled part about a homosexual or at least homoerotic relationship. Also counting this as an "airplane novel" since it centres on a Pakistani Air Force cadet and like half the book is about planes. A Visit from the Goon Squad I started in the morning on Tuesday and finished the same evening. I've seen criticism of it here, but personally I loved it and even enjoyed the somewhat-gimmicky Powerpoint chapter near the end. It's not really a novel, more of a collection of short stories which are linked to a greater or lesser extent by the characters involved, and the lives at various points in time going back to the 60s and then forwards to an easy-to-imagine near-future scenario. I really liked the character work in this and the feeling that they all lived and breathed and had motives of their own. Also, I didn't realise until I'd basically finished it that the majority was set in New York, so it ticked off one of the challenges I'd been more unsure about doing this year. King of the World was a biography of Muhammad Ali which spends at least the first hundred pages barely talking about Ali. This sounds like a criticism but it's not - the book centres on the Clay-Liston fight as the definitive moment in Ali's life, and it takes the time to set the stage by going through some of the history of Liston, Floyd Patterson, and boxing in general as well as the racial angle which is important to understanding Ali. I've seen people in the modern age who've criticised Ali for being "divisive" or written him off because he "hates white people" but a) that's not really true in the way they mean it and b) holy poo poo, if you grew up as a black man in 40s Kentucky and competed in an age where sportswriters regularly referred to black athletes as coons and darkies in published articles, you'd probably not be keen on the white folk either. Remnick does a fantastic job with this, weaving in the boxing stuff along with American history and Ali's journey into (and subsequently out of) the Nation of Islam. This had the potential to be quite dry, but Ali's life and Remnick's portrayal of it absolutely hums with life and energy. Next for me is Norwegian Wood, then after that who knows? I've managed to hit 7 booklord categories this month, too - numbers after applicable book. Year to Date - 8: Booklord: 2-3, 6, 11-12, 16, 18 1. Death and the Penguin (Andrey Kurkov) 6 2. Kitchen (Banana Yoshimoto) 2 3. Sky Burial (Xinran) 3 4. The Shining (Stephen King) 16 5. Come As You Are: The Story of Nirvana (Michael Azerrad) 18 6. A Case of Exploding Mangoes (Mohammed Hanif) 12 7. A Visit from the Goon Squad (Jennifer Egan) 11 8. King of the World (David Remnick)
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Jan 30, 2016 16:16
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marblize posted:Are we counting Memoir as fulfilling the Biography/Autobiography category or no? I'm allowing it since they lump them together.
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Jan 30, 2016 20:19
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This year I'll try to actually post updates every month. I will only check off one of the booklord challenges for any book even if it would count for more than one category while I count my own language-based challenges separately. 1. Manfred Pohl – Geschichte Japans (History of Japan) My first book this year is a reread, I found it in the library and because I studied under him and he died recently I just had to read it again. Nothing special, a short overview of the history of Japan. 2. Jason Stearns – Dancing in the Shadow of Monsters Great overview of the history of the civil wars of 90s Congo and their background/outcomes. I would recommend it to anyone who wants to know more about those years. It has at least helped to understand a lot more what went on there. (5-Something history related) 3. Christian Kracht – Faserland I wanted to read this for a long time and finally got around to. Great book, you only have to look at the 1-star Goodreads reviews to see that there has to be something to it. I’ve never seen a book whose protagonist is hated by so many people and I don’t really get why this deserves all those bad reviews. I thought it was great, it was also extremely German, maybe that was what hits so many people. I like Krachts writing because it’s so simple and funny while also saying a whole lot about…well a lot of stuff. I’d even recommend this for intermediate German readers because of the simple sentences and overall short length. (16- That one book you’ve wanted to read for a while now) 4. Kishi Yuusuke - Suzumebachi (Wasps) I have read two other books by Kishi (Kuroi Ie and Tenshi no Saezuri) and this was very different. The protagonist is alone for most of the book and therefore there is very little dialogue. It’s also really short. While the blurb on the back cover already says that something will be revealed in the last chapters that changes the whole book I didn’t see it coming at all. I was skeptical at first because the basic premise of the book sounds so contrived (dude with a wasp allergy is trapped in a house with lots of wasps) but it was way better than I thought. (22-It’s a Mistery) 5. China Mieville – Three Moments of an Explosion This collection was really difficult to review because everything in there is so different. Some stories were really really good (Säcken and The Bastard Prompt for example) while others had some cool ideas but kind of petered out. While I like that in some cases because it leaves things open for the imagination some stories just kind of felt only “half”. (15-Recently Published) Books Read: 5/40 Booklord Challenges: 4/22 Books in Japanese: 1/10 Books in German: 2/5
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Jan 30, 2016 23:46
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January update! It's been a pretty good month.
Booklord:
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Jan 31, 2016 03:18
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First up, I'm modifying my challenge slightly. Everything I said to begin with still applies, except that I'm modifying the "no more than 3 books by a single author" rule by saying that it specifically doesn't apply to The Arabian Nights. I'll be counting each volume of that as a separate book and I hope to get through the entire thing by the end of the year. Not sure yet if I'll bother with the supplemental volumes or just go with the first ten.
Total: 4/52 Female authors: 2/24 Non-Fiction: 1/12 Arabian Nights: 2/10(16) Goodreads The Arabian Nights is pretty inconsistent, with some stories that move at a decent pace and are pretty entertaining, and then there are others that you just wish would end. The central gimmick, of course, means that they're broken up into nights, each night ending before the current story finishes so that King Shahryar needs to keep Shahrazad alive another day to hear the end; but in practice you're probably not going to stop in the middle of a story like that, so you just get a bit of needless repetition as Shahrazad recaps the bit that just happened. But even more irritating are the stories within stories - either you're enjoying the story you're reading and have to take time out to read another (generally unrelated) story before you can finish it, or you're sick of the story you're reading and the break just means it's going to be even longer before it's over. There's also a lot of poetry. People just recite (or improvise) poetry at the drop of a hat and it gets pretty tiresome. Fortunately you can skip it. Unfortunately, the reason you can skip it is because it's never essential to the story. I started out reading it, but I gave up long before the end of volume one. I didn't read a single line of poetry in all of volume two, and I think the book would be much improved by removing it. Then again, it's not hard to skip so if you like it then I guess it's good that it's there. The first volume has some pretty good stories, including a lot of djinns and magic and stuff, which is fun, and even the more mundane stuff is mostly pretty interesting as someone unfamiliar with the culture. The second book contains no magic and is mostly one super-long story that goes off on so many tangents and digressions that it's absurd. And then for some reason the book ends before the end of the story, so you basically have to move immediately on to volume three rather than taking a break. Very odd. I'd recommend the first volume, but I'm not sure I'd advise going on. I guess it'll depend on how the later volumes go. Recovering Apollo 8 was a pretty good sci-fi novella that reminded me of the type of thing Arthur C. Clarke wrote. It's really short, so the $13 Amazon wants for the paperback is probably more than it's worth, but I enjoyed it. The best book I read this month though was Stasiland, a sort of memoir, sort of journalistic type of thing, where the author went and interviewed people who'd lived in East Berlin before the wall came down. I normally don't like the style of writing where the author inserts themself into the story like this, but it's pretty low-key here and you mostly get the stories of the people who were actually there. It's really fascinating and engaging. I'm not sure how good it is if you're already familiar with what East Germany was like, but I came into it knowing very little so I found a lot that was interesting or surprising.
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Jan 31, 2016 09:56
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Tiggum posted:The Arabian Nights is pretty inconsistent, with some stories that move at a decent pace and are pretty entertaining, and then there are others that you just wish would end. The central gimmick, of course, means that they're broken up into nights, each night ending before the current story finishes so that King Shahryar needs to keep Shahrazad alive another day to hear the end; but in practice you're probably not going to stop in the middle of a story like that, so you just get a bit of needless repetition as Shahrazad recaps the bit that just happened. gently caress you Edit@ in retrospect, this is harsh. But I do think you are very, very stupid. CestMoi fucked around with this message at 12:30 on Jan 31, 2016 |
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Jan 31, 2016 11:06
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I thought I had read more than this this month. Not a great start to the year! 1. Winter's Bone (Daniel Woodrell) A young woman living a poor and isolated Ozark community attempts to find her on-bail father before her family loses their home. A window into a completely alien society for me, some pretty nasty stuff going on. 2. Only Ever Yours (Louise O'Neill) A young adult novel that has been described as The Handmaid’s Tale meets Mean Girls. In a dystopian future women exist only as breeding vessels for males and are genetically engineered to be “perfect”. They are raised in isolated schools where only the very best will be chosen as wives. The schools exist to teach the girls to be compliant and that the only thing of value is their appearance. A disturbing novel which pushes the culture suggested by women’s magazines to the extreme. Interesting, if rather unpleasant to read at times. 3. Do No Harm: Stories of Life, Death and Brain Surgery (Henry Marsh) This book is the memoirs of a brain surgeon. Each chapter tells the story of a particular case, mostly ones which go wrong in some way. There didn’t seem to be any specific chronology followed, but the chapters flowed well into each other and was an enlightening read into the mindset and struggles of a surgeon looking back over his career. 4. Persuasion (Jane Austen) Not much to say here, it’s a Jane Austen novel with all that entails. 5. Wonders of Life (Brian Cox and Andrew Cohen) For a pop-science book was pretty good, it accompanies a TV series which I haven’t seen. A lot more time given to the (bio-)chemical aspects of life than I was expecting which was nice, since pop-science books typically avoid any and all chemistry, especially equations. Definitely recommended if you're interested in the story of evolution/development of life with a Chemistry and Physics focus. I plan to do the booklord challenge counting each book towards at most one of the specific goals. The current status: 1) Vanilla Number: 5/52 4) Something written in the 1800s: Persuasion (Jane Austen) 9) Something written by a musician: Wonders of Life (Brian Cox and Andrew Cohen) 13) Read Something YA: Only Ever Yours (Louise O'Neill)
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Jan 31, 2016 12:00
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Woo, January Update Time! Here's what I read during January: 1. S. by J.J. Abrams and Doug Dorst. I generally enjoyed this but was somewhat let down by the ending. I've done some reading of apocryphal materials related to it and feel slightly less grumpy about it, but still feel kind of dissatisfied. That said, I'd still recommend it. It was a very enjoyable reading experience -- I loved the marginalia and the inserts. 4/5 2. The Wrath and the Dawn by Renee Adieh. A YA novel inspired by 1001 Arabian Nights. Vivid and evocative (if sometimes a little purple) prose. It started out well and sort of slumped in the middle, but ended strongly. I'm cautiously looking forward to the next installment, which is due out in May 2016. 3.5/5 3. Simon vs. the Homo Sapiens Agenda by Becky Albertalli. An enjoyable and cute story about a high schooler trying to negotiate coming out, social relationships, blackmail, and crushes. Maybe doesn't quite deserve all the hype it got, but a fun read nonetheless. 4/5 4. The Nuns of Sant'Ambrogio: The True Story of a Convent in Scandal by Hubert Wolf. A book about heresy, attempted murder, sex, lesbian initiation rites, and the Vatican bureaucracy. Started this one back in December, left the last 100pp or so unread, and picked it back up earlier this week. Historiographically, it's really solid; the author does a great job of integrating relevant information into the text (and his extensive footnotes) without it seeming patronizing or overbearing. It's dense, but definitely worth the time and effort to read it. 4/5 5. Richard Yates by Tao Lin. This was my wildcard recommendation for the 2016 challenge thread. I found Lin's style oddly compelling, but didn't like reading the book that much... it was too much an unrepentant retelling of his abusive relationship with a high school girl. There were aspects of the story that I liked, but by and large, this was neither an enjoyable read nor one that made me want to read his other books. 2/5 6. The Ghost Network by Catie Disabato. A story about a Lady Gaga-esque pop star who disappears and the people who try to find her and understand her reasons for disappearing. I really enjoyed reading this -- it integrated two of my favorite things: the Situationists and fiction novels written in the style of non-fiction books. There were also lesbians. 5/5 7-8. The Wicked + The Divine, Volumes 1 and 2 by Kieron Gillen and Jamie McKelvie. Every ninety years, twelve gods get reincarnated into human forms. This time around, they're rock stars in London. This is the story not only of the gods themselves but of the mortals who (sometimes) unwittingly get pulled into their orbit. The art is really great, and I'm looking forward to reading more of the series. 4/5 to both volumes. 9. Relic by Douglas Preston and Lincoln Child. My mom recommended this book to me. It's a thriller from 1995 about a scary monster loose in the definitely-not-AMNH in New York, complete with references to things like "electronic mail." The perfect read for being on vacation (which I am). Female protagonist was nice; the inclusion of a significant character who uses a wheelchair was promising at the start, but had its really problematic moments. I'm probably going to read the second book in the series because of the way this one left off, even though there are other things I want to read more. 3/5. BookLord Challenge Progress: 1) Vanilla Number (9/52) 2) Something written by a woman - The Ghost Network 3) Something Written by a nonwhite author - The Wrath and the Dawn 5) Something History Related (fictional or non-fiction your choice) - The Nuns of Sant Ambrogio 12) Read Airplane fiction (Patterson, ect) - Relic 13) Read Something YA - Simon vs. the Homo Sapiens Agenda 14) Wildcard! - Richard Yates 17) The First book in a series - The Wicked + The Divine 22) It’s a Mystery - S.
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Jan 31, 2016 14:25
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CestMoi posted:gently caress you Care to elaborate on that? I'd be interested in hearing what specifically you take issue with and why.
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Jan 31, 2016 15:25
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Janurary! 1) Vanilla Number: 6/30 2) Something written by a woman: A Matter of Heart 3) Something Written by a nonwhite author 4) Something written in the 1800s 5) Something History Related (fictional or non-fiction you’re choice) 6) A book about or narrated by an animal 7) A collection of essays 8) A work of Science Fiction 9) Something written by a musician 10) Read a long book, something over 500 pages 11) Read something about or set in NYC 12) Read Airplane fiction (Patterson, ect) 13) Read Something YA: Juniors 14) Wildcard! 15) Something recently published (up to a year. The year will be the day you start this challenge): The Great Glass Sea 16) That one book you’ve wanted to read for a while now. 17) The First book in a series 18) A biography or autobiography: Cinderella Story: My Life in Golf 19) Read something from the lost generation (Fitzgerald, Hemmingway, ect.) or from the Beat Genneration 20) Read a banned book 21) A Short Story collection 22) It’s a Mystery: The Girl on the Train 1) The Great Glass Sea by Josh Weil: This book wasn't as good as I thought it was going to be. It had a feel of a traditional Russian novel that was sent in what might have been the not to distant future. It tried to have have somewhat of a science fiction feel to it and the feel of a Russian Novel, but it didn't work at all. 3.60/5 2) Girl on the Train by Paula Hawkins: This books was hyped up as the next Gone Girl, however I felt that it was much better written than Gone Girl was. The only thing that really turned me off was the fact that it jumped back and forth in time too much, which was the only thing that I didn't like about it. 4.99/5 3) Cinderella Story: My Life in Golf by Bill Murray: It felt like a Bill Murray book mainly because of the fact that he talked about golf which is his real passion and not acting, but Murray is a better actor than his is a golfer. 4.25/5 4) Juniors by Kaui Hart Hemmings: After a somewhat lackluster Sophomore Novel (The Possibilities), Hart Hemmings returns to paradise and focuses on the teenagers of the islands of Hawaii. Hart Hemmings captures the current teenager very well and makes them seem very realistic compared to some of the novels that are out there. 5/5 5) Stand Off by Andrew Smith: I really loved Winger, the first book in the series that I read back in 2014, but this one was pretty boring and I couldn't really get into it as much as I did Winger. 4/5 6) A Matter of Heart by Amy Feller Dominy: I saw this book in EW and after reading a positive review, I decided to check it out. The story revolves around a swimmer who is basically on track to go to the Olympics (The release of the book is fitting because of the fact that Olympics are seven months away) and after discovering she has HCM, a type of heart condition that can kill her at any minute if she gets too active, it turns her whole world upside down. Another YA novel that has a main character that the reader can relate too. 3.75/5 Currently reading: The Bone Clocks by David Mitchell Vanilla: 6/30 Challenge: 5/22 Indiespensable: 1/15
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Jan 31, 2016 17:55
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January Update Exoskeleton by Shane Stadler- Interesting premise and wanting to find out exactly what was going on kept me reading but oh boy, there is a LOT of graphic torture in this. Not for the fainthearted. The Hobbit by JRR Tolkien - One I've been meaning to re-read for a while, I think I last read it as a teenager. As enjoyable as I remembered, weirdly longer than I expected, I think I assumed that loads had been added to the films but actually it wasn't that much, more the background to some of the random events in the book. The Serpent by Claire North - It took me a little while to get my head around the writing style (it's written as if you are a dispassionate observer of what's happening) but once I did I loved it. Beautifully written, I'll definitely read the rest of the series. Dear Mr Kershaw: A Pensioner Writes by Derek Philpott - A family book club read (not chosen by me) and quite a specific premise, letters written to music artists picking apart their lyrics and the replies received from said artists. Some made me giggle but it got repetitive fairly quickly and may have been more appreciated by a bigger music lover. Booklord Challenge Progress 1) Vanilla Number - 4/35 3) Something Written by a nonwhite author 4) Something written in the 1800s 5) Something History Related (fictional or non-fiction your choice) 6) A book about or narrated by an animal 7) A collection of essays. 8) A work of Science Fiction 9) Something written by a musician 10) Read a long book, something over 500 pages 11) Read something about or set in NYC 12) Read Airplane fiction (Patterson, ect) 13) Read Something YA 14) Wildcard! 15) Something recently published 16) That one book you’ve wanted to read for a while now. 18) A biography or autobiography 19) Read something from the lost generation (Fitzgerald, Hemmingway, ect.) or from the Beat Genneration 20) Read a banned book 21) A Short Story collection 22) It’s a Mystery. I'll have to pay a bit more attention to the booklord challenge in my next book selections! I'm currently working on House of Leaves which should meet the long book criteria, Bossypants by Tina Fey which will fit the autobiography criteria and have a couple of others planned that should satisfy some criteria. I'm trying not to count books in more than two categories but we'll see.
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Jan 31, 2016 17:56
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January: Woman at Point Zero by Nawal El Saadawi - Polemical novel supposedly based on the experiences of an imprisoned woman El Saadawi interviewed. The main character, Firdaus, recounts how she has been abused pretty much since birth simply because she is a woman. She is eventually sentenced to death for killing her former pimp. Originally published in 1975, the main character is fairly one-dimensional, coming across as being full of anger, resentment and little else. The other characters are flat and only serves as foils to Firdaus. This novel is more notable for its political character than its literary qualities. Blindness by Jose Saramago - People turn blind and society breaks down. The Christ-like main character, known only as "the wife of the doctor" is the only one who retains her eyesight, and suffers many indignities in her effort to help the rest. The story is repetitive in its descriptions of how morale and social niceties break down in the asylum the first group of blind people have been locked up in, and might have worked better if it had been edited down to half the length or so. The Arab of the Future: A Graphic Memoir by Riad Sattouf - graphic novel/memoir based on growing up in Libya and Syria in the early 1980s with a Syrian father and a French mother. Life in these countries is portrayed with what seems to be blatant, childlike honesty, though it could of course be simply caricature. The overall impression is that Sattouf has a keen eye for observing the absurdities of life, whether it occurs in France or in Syria through the viewpoint of a child. Recommended reading. The Sixth Extinction: An Unnatural History by Elisabeth Kolbert - non-fiction about human-caused extinctions. Subject matter is compelling, but the presentation is a bit lightweight and the book comes across as a collection of magazine articles rather than a coherent whole. Still, worth a read if the subject is of interest. 1) Vanilla Number 4/40 2) 3) 18) Kopijeger fucked around with this message at 20:19 on Jan 31, 2016 |
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Jan 31, 2016 19:31
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nerdpony posted:5. Richard Yates by Tao Lin. This was my wildcard recommendation for the 2016 challenge thread. I found Lin's style oddly compelling, but didn't like reading the book that much... it was too much an unrepentant retelling of his abusive relationship with a high school girl. There were aspects of the story that I liked, but by and large, this was neither an enjoyable read nor one that made me want to read his other books. 2/5 He named his book after another author? huh. 1 The Ministery of Fear by Graham Greene. Another thriller where the most interesting thing is the setting, this time London under the blitz. I considered including him as part of the lost generation (born 5 years after Hemmingway) but gently caress it. 2 The Orchard Keeper by Cormac McCarthy. Keepin' it 'Carthy. 3 The Ipcress File by Len Deighton. I liked the film so much I decided to read the book. He goes abroad in this one, and gets a lot more snide remarks in. 17 4 The Candles of Your Eyes by James Purdy. Whole bunch of very short stories. Not as good as his other stuff, to my mind. Considered including him as a beat (same birth year as Burroughs) but gently caress it. 21 5 The Barnum Museum by Steven Milhauser. streets folding like pages in a book... fall through them, feeling only a chill in the air... [text from the about the author slip in a victorian novel... megadose of American Borges but much less lovable to my mind. 13 6 A Visit from the Goon Squad. A novel in the form of a collection of short stories, abandoning what makes novels good. Development and suspense are abandoned as as she ping pongs through lives. Includes a fairly funny cod DFW and some fairly terrible predicted future. The next generation will speak in text speach (remember that?) and, for some reason, all of the stock slides that come with power point. 11 7 The Power and the Glory by Graham Greene. Of interest to Catholics only. 8 Letters to Sir WIlliam Temple by Dorothy Osbourne. Incredibly charming collection of love letters from the 1600s. One to read again 5 9 Bech: A Life by John Updike. Pretty funny novella in the mold of Pnin. You loving bet I broke down a "The Complete Bech" to make the numbers go up higher. 9/60 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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Jan 31, 2016 20:02
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Annihilation (Southern Reach 1) by Jeff VanderMeer. I loved this! I'd describe it as environmental horror told from the viewpoint of a biologist. The horror was well done and interesting and managed to scare me a little without resorting to body horror or descriptions of gore. Despite it being the first part of a trilogy it works as a whole story by itself. A good, easy to read book to ease me back into reading. 5/5 Authority (Southern Reach 2) by Jeff VanderMeer. Now here is where the problems begin. VanderMeer was actually contracted to write three books in a year (I'm assuming he had the first book ready and was forced to write the last two). The problem with Authority is that it doesn't have much in terms of content. Nothing much happens at all and since VanderMeer is not the strongest of writers it's extremely uninteresting. I'd even say you should just read the first book and leave it at that unless you really really want to know what caused the events of the first book. The main character with no personality worked in the first book because the environment was the point of interest, however in Authority VanderMeer changes into third person point of view and the whole thing falls flat. 2/5
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Jan 31, 2016 21:26
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1. The Stranger by Albert Camus. I hadn't read Camus in English before, it was p fun. I might read The Plague in English next month. 2. Sonnets by William Shakespeare. I don't know if I wanted to be intimately familiar with the cruelty of time and fading beauty, but I sure am now. 3. One Day In The Life Of Ivan Denisovitch by Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn. One of two good "perspective novels" I read this month that succeeded in making me feel claustrophobic and miserable. 4. Three Men In A Boat by Jerome Jerome. I read most of this to my sick mother. It's quite a fun book to read aloud with other people and I was tickled many many times. 5. Hunger by Knut Hamsun. A writing style that one can easily fall in love with. Frequently, it felt like a less aimless Kafka (not that I mind the aimlessness of Kafka, just that it was nice to encounter a similar style that nevertheless wanted to focus on something different). I will be stockpiling more Hamsun for the rest of the year. 6. City On Fire by Garth Risk Hallberg took me the whole month, the others were weekend reads. I think 1 long book and 5 short books is a good ratio that I will stick to. Anyway, this was an extremely promising book. Promising more than outright enjoyable for its plot or characters, but still. Hallberg clearly has an assload of talent and is sure to keep making big-money contemporary lit. Vanilla Number: 6/75 Something written in the 1800s: Hunger Something History Related: One Day In The Life Of Ivan Denisovitch Read something about or set in NYC: City On Fire
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Jan 31, 2016 21:55
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