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I think I missed the February update but it was kinda hectic and I didn't get much reading done. The 2016 Book Lord Challenge 1) Vanilla Number: 16/40 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 - The Secret Place by Tana French 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! Devil in a Blue Dress by Walter Mosley, as suggested by High Warlord Zog 15) Something recently published (up to a year. The year will be the day you start this challenge) Medusa's Web by Tim Powers 16) That one book you’ve wanted to read for a while now. - Inherent Vice by Thomas Pynchon 17) The First book in a series Harmony Black by Craig Schaefer 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. New reads: Bitter Seeds, The Coldest War and Necessary Evil by Ian Tregillis. Alternate history WW2 and Cold War where the Nazis run a superhero program and Allies counter by making deals with Lovecraftian elder gods. Not as stupid as it sounds and mostly focuses on the slow dissolution of morals when faced with desperate situations. 3.5/5 The Secret Place by Tana French. I love Tana French. Yeah, her prose has occassionally been accused of being purple but she has a knack for describing Irish locales and culture with a wonderful mix of eccentric and depressing. A teenager is murdered at a boarding school and a year later a photograph with "I know the killer" written on it is discovered. It's basically Teenagers Are Bastards: The Whodunit, with a good helping of police intrigue on the side; not her strongest book but a very good read nonetheless if only for the faithful recreation of teenage drama - that suddenly turns deadly serious. 4/5. Putting this into the long book category since both woman author and mystery should be decidedly easier to fill. Inherent Vice by Thomas Pynchon; I figured it'd be a good entry point to an author that's supposed to be incomprehensible outside America since it's considered a simple book. Mostly loved it - not really for the detective plot but for the utter insanity of the culture it's taking place in. Some bits, like the policeman running a banana racket and grown men discussing conspiracy theories about cartoons will stay with me for quite a while, but most of the time I didn't know whether to laugh or cry. 4.5/5 Medusa's Web by Tim Powers. Powers' books are almost always a hit or miss for me, and this one missed pretty nearly. It has an interesting concept of people getting unstuck in time by watching certain patterns of lines but doesn't really do anything fresh with it. The most interesting bits is the Hollywood silent movie era history it's all intertwined with - Powers is at his best when he can play fast and loose with meticulously researched data. Overall I'm not sure how to approach it - it's not as brilliant as Declare, it's not as bad as Hide Me Among The Graves and it's not as underwhelming as his similarly themed Three Days To Never - but it really doesn't leave much of an impression. 2.5/5 anilEhilated fucked around with this message at 11:46 on Apr 4, 2016 |
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Apr 2, 2016 10:39
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thespaceinvader posted:1: Chimera by Mira Grant Calamity I had a great time with this. It had a grand Sanderson avalanche and a lot of Sanderson imagination, but I felt the whole way through like I was just reading a toned down version of Worm. It was a solid story, but in large part the beats were very similar to Worm's, or so I felt, and whilst Sanderson is better at the craft of writing, I preferred the more mature and more honest approach of Worm. I find it very weird reading a YA book where the protag feels the need to censor swears on his phone, but is happy to kill people. I know it's supposed to be part of the character of a kid who grew up in the environment he did, but... it just doesn't quite gel for me. Overall the series was worth reading though. And at least Sanderson acknowledged in this one how stupid his made-up swears are. Half The World was great, though. I really enjoyed it a lot. Like the first in the series the story wasn't desperately complex, and from the reader's perspective it was quite easy to figure the plots, but it didn't really matter to me. It has an excellent strong female protagonist, a well-told plot, and a lot of action and drama. I thoroughly enjoyed it, and will probably move straight on to Half A War.
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Apr 2, 2016 10:47
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screenwritersblues posted:February! March! 11) Beautiful Ruins by Jess Walter: A good book that jumps around between the 1940s and the current time. I liked it and it was one of the few books that time hopping worked worked for once. 4.7/5 12) The History of Rock and Roll in Ten Songs by Greil Marcus: A somewhat bland look of the history of rock and roll in ten. Marcus tries to cover so much in so little time. 3.8/5 1) Vanilla Number: 12/30 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: Massive Pissed Love 8) A work of Science Fiction: The Bone Clocks 9) Something written by a musician 10) Read a long book, something over 500 pages 11) Read something about or set in NYC: Ten Thousand Saints 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: The History of Rock and Roll in Ten Songs 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: Magic for Beginners 22) It’s a Mystery: The Girl on the Train Vanilla: 12/30 Challenge: 10/22 Indiespensable: 2/10 Currently reading: Yeah! Yeah! Yeah! The Story of Pop Music from Bill Haley to Beyonce
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Apr 5, 2016 04:32
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Booklord Challenge Update posted:Count: 31/96 books, 2 nonfiction (6%), 1 reread (3%) 21. The Fall by Garth Nix 22. Castle by Garth Nix 23. Aenir by Garth Nix 24. Above the Veil by Garth Nix 25. Into Battle by Garth Nix 26. The Violet Keystone by Garth Nix Nix's Seventh Tower series. Needed some light reading on a plane trip and decided to knock off the YA category. It's not bad, but seems to be written for a younger audience than Sabriel or Shade's Children. Meh. 27. Uprooted by Naomi Novik Novik needs to stop writing Temeraire and write more stuff like this, holy poo poo. Head and shoulders above her other novels, and I can see why a friend of mine described it as "the reason [my book] has no shot at the Nebula this year". 28. Trouble and her Friends by Melissa Scott It's the queer feminist version of The Shockwave Rider, basically. It has what I think of as that "vintage cyberpunk" feel, which is really optimistic technologically and really pessimistic socially and environmentally. It's interesting to see what it's optimistic or pessimistic about, though (the book was written in the 90s and is set sometime around 2040-2050). For example, direct optical interfaces are ubiquitous, and neurojacks are a proven and increasingly popular technology, but omnipresent wireless connectivity is nowhere to be seen. The US coasts have been devastated by pollution, but global climate change isn't on the radar at all. Being a woman in tech still gets you a lot of poo poo, but being openly gay makes you a social outcast almost everywhere and AIDs is still a death sentence and an omnipresent, terrifying threat. It does feel like some subplots were very heavily hinted and then not followed up on at all, like Coigne's unusual level of interest in the intrusion. I didn't enjoy it as much as a story as The Roads of Heaven, but it's more fun to dissect. 29. Mighty Good Road by Melissa Scott I think this is the weakest of the Melissa Scott books I've read, but that's not to say it's bad. It actually reminds me a lot of much of Zahn's work, but it involves very little in the way of direct confrontation, and ends with a bunch of forensics work rather than a showdown with drawn blasters and then the protagonists decide that maybe the past really is better off buried, which is not at all typical for the genre. 30. Sex in the Sea by Marah J. Hardt Nonfiction about the reproductive habits of various sorts of sea life. Just as weird and interesting (and, occasionally, horrifying) as I was expecting. The contents of our oceans are, frankly, much, much weirder and more alien than most of the aliens that appear in SF. 31. Revisionary by Jim C. Hines The last Magic Ex Libris book. Holy poo poo does he end the series with a bang. It does kind of feel like the limits of libriomancy in general and Isaac's powers in specific get less and less well-defined as the series goes on, but not enough to really bother me. Next up is The Codebreakers by David Kahn. After that I have a bunch of stuff trying to get to the front of my shortlist, like Traitor Baru, The Goblin Emperor, Ship of Fools, and The Long Way to a Small, Angry Planet. ToxicFrog fucked around with this message at 13:16 on Apr 5, 2016 |
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Apr 5, 2016 13:14
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ToxicFrog posted:
Whoa, I thought it was just the latest book, not the last book. Moving that one up in my queue.
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Apr 5, 2016 15:28
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screenwritersblues posted:Currently reading: Yeah! Yeah! Yeah! The Story of Pop Music from Bill Haley to Beyonce I've been real curious about this one. Interested to see how it goes!
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Apr 5, 2016 16:06
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Dienes posted:Whoa, I thought it was just the latest book, not the last book. Moving that one up in my queue. I may be misinformed, but I thought it was the last one and it sure feels like it's wrapping things up. It is at least the end of a major plot arc.
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Apr 5, 2016 17:02
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ToxicFrog posted:21. The Fall by Garth Nix
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Apr 6, 2016 01:08
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Ben Nevis posted:I've been real curious about this one. Interested to see how it goes! It's been good so far. The author needs to put out an updated version. 2013 was three years ago.
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Apr 6, 2016 04:45
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Yes?
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Apr 6, 2016 12:53
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ToxicFrog posted:Yes? I dunno. Their M.O. is to just empty quote people in this thread. Low effort book shame?
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Apr 6, 2016 14:10
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Ah yes an MO based entirely off of two posts, one of which was not an empty quote.
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Apr 6, 2016 14:42
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You're right. A link to a two second clip of an air horn sound is a quality post in a thread encouraging people to read more. I just don't appreciate the subtleties of a human heart's posts. Please, let's explore the specifics of my word choice in each post defending people reading what they want, as I find discussions of semantics rewarding, fulfilling, and a positive use of time.
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Apr 6, 2016 14:51
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Franchescanado posted:You're right. A link to a two second clip of an air horn sound is a quality post in a thread encouraging people to read more. I just don't appreciate the subtleties of a human heart's posts. Lol
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Apr 6, 2016 14:54
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Franchescanado posted:You're right. A link to a two second clip of an air horn sound is a quality post in a thread encouraging people to read more. I just don't appreciate the subtleties of a human heart's posts. If you try to read more, maybe what you read should be good? just a thought.
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Apr 6, 2016 15:30
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david crosby posted:If you try to read more, maybe what you read should be good? just a thought. I agree with this, and it's personally what I pursue, but "good" is subjective. Not everyone reads for the same reason. It's fun and easy to insult someone's reading choice, but what's the point? The average American reads something like 4 books a year. So if someone makes a goal to read more, why shame them if they pad it out with a fantasy novel or a YA supernatural novel? They're still reading. I used to insult people for reading Twilight-esque books instead of "good" books, but then I graduated high school. After I taught kids and learned that most people don't read because they were insulted for what they read, I decided to stop being a dick about it. I just want people to read more.
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Apr 6, 2016 15:59
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If people are legitimately curious as to why I read those books and not any of the much better books on my backlog, it's simple answer to the question of "what can I read on a six hour plane flight that will still be comprehensible on three hours of sleep" (answer: time to finish off the YA category in the challenge) followed by "ok, what YA should I read" (answer: I liked everything else by Garth Nix that I've read and I have the ebooks handy).
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Apr 6, 2016 17:04
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Crazy idea: people should read what they like to read.
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Apr 6, 2016 18:58
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I think it's good to challenge yourself, and this is the place for it, (that's what I set my challenge with in mind). I mean, yes, I could go to my local library, and binge on manga and be done, but why do that? Why did I even bother with the challenge then? While my main goal is to enjoy myself, I try to strike a balance with what I read, because I think of my dad who reads nothing but Discworld. I like Discworld, but I don't read just Discworld. Think of it like food. Even if you loved burgers, eating nothing but burgers will become boring, and you should eat different things to keep it interesting. (Also you will die if you eat nothing but burgers. It's not a good example, I know.) But all that aside, I think it's fine to binge on books like that on a plane ride. Personally, I'd crochet until my hands became gnarled claws, but if I was reading, yeah, I wouldn't bust out the literature. I'm not saying we should be a hug box, but I'm not sure there's much point in bookshaming in this thread.
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Apr 6, 2016 19:25
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Franchescanado posted:You're right. A link to a two second clip of an air horn sound is a quality post in a thread encouraging people to read more. I just don't appreciate the subtleties of a human heart's posts. nice post
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Apr 8, 2016 01:02
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March! (a little bit late...) 16. Last Exit to Brooklyn - Hubert Selby Jr. This was... extremely hosed up. Consisting of several interrelated stories, Last Exit to Brooklyn tells the tales of the underclass of Brooklyn - the whores, the queens, the addicts - and does not spare a single detail. It's incredibly well-written (great stream-of-consciousness type stuff) but seems to revel in the filthy and sordid, to the point that I felt a need for a shower after certain sections. It was really quite good, but incredibly repellent at times... which, I suppose, means it left an impression, which is more than I can say for some books I've read this month. 17. War & Peace - Leo Tolstoy A second time through the Russian epic for me, and I loved it still. It follows several dozen characters - and about four or five main characters - through the years of Napoleon's war on Russia. It deals equally well with the epic scope of the conflict and the inner landscapes of the characters, and proves how masterful Tolstoy could be. 18. Ship of Magic (Liveship Traders #1) - Robin Hobb Having finished the first Farseer trilogy, I continued my trek through Hobb's work into her pirate trilogy, the Liveship Traders. I dig a lot of it - the pirates, the talking/thinking ships, the serpents, the politics - though Hobb has a propensity to make her villains a little TOO villainous. Still, I appreciate the wider scope that these books take over the singular first-person narration of the Farseer books, and she’s created quite an interesting world with intriguing mysteries. 19. Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire - J.K. Rowling Man, these longer Harry Potter books take a while to get through when you read them aloud! The five-month-old baby seems to like them, though. 20. The Hundred Thousand Kingdoms (Inheritance Trilogy #1) - N.K. Jemison I wanted to like this, but in the end it kind of left me cold. An outcast descendent of the royal line is called back to court and into several intrigues, both with her royal relatives and the actual gods that have been enslaved by the royal family. It was a pretty interesting premise, but it seemed like it couldn’t decide whether it wanted to be YA or sexyfantasy and kind of failed at both. 21. Best Served Cold - Joe Abercrombie I've been rereading Joe Abercrombie's books - slowly - and have just gotten to the standalone novels. I feel like this is where Abercrombie’s style really starts to pick up (though you could tell he was improving throughout the First Law trilogy - the third is so much better than the first it’s absurd) and despite its exceptional length the book moves swiftly. Some of his characters in this one lean a little heavily on their quirks, but as far as the brutality, dark humor, and unexpected twists that I expect from Abercrombie go, this one delivers the goods. 22. Flora and Ulysses - Kate DiCamillo A really cute little book about a quiet, gawky comic book enthusiast and the squirrel she meets who has super powers. Definitely written for a young audience, it also tells its stories in a comic book style occasionally. Really cute, not super deep, but good if you’ve got a preteen or a precocious 8 year old you need to buy a book for. 23. A Little Life - Hanya Yanagihara Here is where I started reading "books of the year" of 2015, as you can see from this and most of the following. This one, a huge doorstopper at over 700 pages, is ostensibly about a group of four friends in New York. However, it ends up becoming about one of them, Jude St. Francis - and his traumatic past. While it was very readable, at times it wavered on the edge of either shmaltz or tragedy. 24. Fates and Furies - Lauren Groff Not sure why this one got the hype it did - it tells the tale of a marriage from two points of view, the husband’s and then the wife’s, but it still seemed like “the marital problems of two white people: the book” and never really rose above it. 25. The Tsar of Love and Disco - Anthony Marra I read and loved Marra’s “A Constellation of Vital Phenomena” last year (despite its pretentious title) so I picked up this collection of short stories and found… pretty much the same thing. The themes, locations, and style are all very similar. It’s a bunch of interrelated short stories that span Russia from the early days of heavy Soviet censorship and banishment to the developing oligarchy that it is today, and there are some very coincidental links between the characters and stories so that at the end, it all comes together very well. Again, it seemed like something of a rehash of his first book, but I guess if it works, don’t fix it. 26. The Plot Against America - Philip Roth My first Roth in a long time - read American Pastoral years ago and hated it - and for the most part it was pretty good. Someone else (possibly in this thread?) said it seemed relevant to the political atmosphere of today, what with a charismatic celebrity (in this case, Charles Lindbergh) seizing hold of the Presidency after several racially charged remarks (this time against the Jews). The book veers into some very dramatic events near the end, but perhaps what made it seem so resonant was the atmosphere of dread that hung over the main character (Philip Roth, as a boy, in this alternate historical timeline) and his family. 27. Bats of the Republic - Zachary Thomas Dodson Now this, I liked. Like JJ Abrams’s “S”, Mark Danielewski’s “House of Leaves”, or Garth Risk Hallberg’s “City on Fire,” this book stretches the boundaries of how a book is presented - three tales happening at the same time, one telling a story of a dystopian future printed on futuristic paper, one in the journals of a man exploring the republic of Texas in the early 1800s, and one in a fanciful 19th century novel style about the woman the explorer left behind. There are illustrations, guidebooks, clever graphic details that suggest which of these stories is truly real, and an ingeniously contrived letter that may or may not solve the riddle of the whole book. It doesn’t leave you with a conclusive ending, but I think it may entice me to return to the book sometime later to try to puzzle it out some more. Through sheer creative flair, this one definitely gets my Book of the Month. 1) Vanilla Number (27/52) 2) Something written by a woman (Hobb, Rowling, Jemison, DiCamillo, Yanagihara, Groff) 3) Something Written by a nonwhite author (Yanagihara) 4) Something written in the 1800s - War and Peace 5) Something History Related - War and Peace 6) A book about or narrated by an animal - Flora and Ulysses 7) 8) A work of Science Fiction - Bats of the Republic (sorta) 9) 10) Read a long book, something over 500 pages - A Little Life, Best Served Cold, War and Peace, Ship of Magic, Goblet of Fire 11) Read something about or set in NYC - Last Exit to Brooklyn, A Little Life, Fates and Furies 12) Read Airplane fiction (Patterson, ect) 13) Read Something YA - Flora and Ulysses 14) Wildcard! 15) Something recently published -A Little Life, Fates and Furies, Bats of the Republic, and Tsar of Love and Techno 16) That one book you’ve wanted to read for a while now 17) The First book in a series: The Hundred Thousand Kingdoms, Ship of Magic 18) 19) Read something from the lost generation (Fitzgerald, Hemmingway, ect.) or from the Beat Generation 20) Read a banned book - Last Exit to Brooklyn 21) A Short Story collection - The Tsar of Love and Techno 22)
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Apr 8, 2016 22:40
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I've been reading books.
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Apr 10, 2016 01:15
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thespaceinvader posted:1: Chimera by Mira Grant
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Apr 10, 2016 14:09
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Bit of a late update, and I'm a little behind on my challenge but not too badly. 5. To Glory We Steer - Alexander Kent The 5th in a series of historical fiction books about a British naval officer in the late 1700s - early 1800s. I know nothing about boats/sailing so I'm not sure why I like these books so much, but I do. I've liked each one more than the previous as the story and writing has grown and become more complex, the characters more nuanced. This one was interesting in that it showed more of the realities of how sailors were pressed into naval service - essentially just rounded up and taken from their homes and families with absolutely no choice. It presents it as necessary for the Royal Navy but also doesn't hide how destructive and painful it was for the unlucky individuals who were dragged away to a very brutal life facing lots of danger with a high risk for death or being crippled. 6. Three Men in a Boat - Jerome K. Jerome I'm also late to the party on this one as I saw it in the January BOTM and downloaded it since it was free. Absolutely loved this and found it incredibly funny and charming. Lots of insight into human nature beneath all the wit and humour. 7. The Martian - Andy Weir Disappointed in this after all the hype. I started reading it and disliked the writing style so much that I almost gave up on it, but this had become so popular that I felt I should stick with it. Great concept, and I enjoyed seeing what challenges he faced and how he approached them, but the inconsistent and at times juvenile writing style really bothered me. I think it really suffered from a lack of polished editing. The general survival plot was gripping and a great read, but a lot of bits dragged on or seemed completely unnecessary or "zany wacky", and the transitions could be jarring. The other characters were entirely one dimensional, which I guess would have been ok since this was essentially a story about one man's survival, but there was a lot of forced pathos shoved into the other characters which just fell flat. 8. The End is Now - Apocalypse Triptych #2 This is the second collection of apocalypse short stories. The first book is stories about the beginning of the apocalypse, and this one is stories that take place during the apocalypse. I didn't enjoy this one as much as the first one. A lot of the stories that I really enjoyed in the first one seemed like they worked better as a standalone short story than a continuing story, which was disappointing. The stories that I didn't really enjoy from the first one didn't really improve when continued, so overall, I felt this was a weaker collection of stories. Not a bad read, but not a particularly good one either.
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Apr 10, 2016 14:42
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1) Vanilla Number: 24/52 in 2016 2) Something written by a woman (Gilead, Little Life, Goldfinch, Americanah, My Brilliant Friend) 3) Something Written by a nonwhite author (Little Life, Americanah, When Breath Becomes Air, A Brief History of Seven Killings) 4) Something written in the 1800s - nothing yet 5) Something History Related - (Billion Dollar Spy, Black Mass, the Big Short) 6) A book about or narrated by an animal - nothing yet 7) A collection of essays - (Consider the Lobster) 8) A work of Science Fiction - (Neuromancer, The 5th Head of Cerebrus, 3 Body Problem, Ready Player One) 9) Something written by a musician - nothing yet 10) Read a long book, something over 500 pages - lol, I'm on Kindle but (Goldfinch, Brief History, Little Life, Gravity's Rainbow, All the Light We Cannot See, The Lords of Discipline, The Intelligent Investor) 11) Read something about or set in NYC (Goldfinch, Big Short, Brief History of Seven Killings, A Little Life, Motherless Brooklyn) 12) Read Airplane fiction (Patterson, etc.) - nothing yet 13) Read Something YA - (The Magicians ugh) 14) Wildcard! nothing yet 15) Something recently published - nothing yet 16) That one book you’ve wanted to read for a while now - (Gravity's Rainbow) 17) The First book in a series - (The Magicians, though I won't be continuing, The 3 Body Problem) 18) A biography or autobiography 19) Read something from the lost generation (Fitzgerald, Hemmingway, etc.) or from the Beat Generation - nothing yet 20) Read a banned book - nothing yet 21) A Short Story collection - nothing yet 22) It’s a Mystery - nothing yet I just stumbled across this reading challenge and so a lot of the categories have been empty for me thusly, but I'll get cracking on them!
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Apr 10, 2016 17:32
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CestMoi posted:I've been reading books. Nice.
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Apr 12, 2016 11:43
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Mr. Squishy posted:Nice. It is nice, Mr Squishy. I see you too have been reading books. How are you finding them?
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Apr 12, 2016 14:04
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I like to save my reviews for the month-end wrap up but I read a book from the 2010s recently and it was so bad.
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Apr 12, 2016 14:59
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thespaceinvader posted:1: Chimera by Mira Grant The Providence of Fire was excellent. There was a little bit of early-author-itis in places, but nothing much that really sticks out in my memory again, and it was a really gripping read start to finish, and thoroughly enjoyable. I moved straight on to the next one in the series, which I would heartily recommend.
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Apr 24, 2016 17:49
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I barely read anything this month and the stuff I read was a short stack of dumb crap for goobers Stephen King - Salem's Lot (One of his best, still holds up on this re-read) Stephen King - Mr. Mercedes (This was okay, not great, but I liked the main character enough to start reading the sequel) John Sandford - Dark of the Moon (My dad recommended this to me/forced it on me and it reinforced why I don't listen to my dad's opinions about books) Booklord Challenge progress: 1) Vanilla Number (currently at 19 of 40) 2) 15 books written by women (currently at 6 of 15) 4) Something written in the 1800s 6) A book about or narrated by an animal 13) Read Something YA 16) That one book you’ve wanted to read for a while now. 19) Read something from the lost or beat generation 20) Read a banned book 21) A Short Story collection On the plus side I didn't buy any books again in March, but yeah no challenges crossed off and I barely read a drat thing.
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Apr 26, 2016 23:48
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Mr. Squishy posted: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. 27 May We be Forgiven by A.M. Homes. I actually bought this in hardback back when I lightly paid attention to current lit (listened to Saturday Review) and it sounded fun and violent, and it does start off with a visceral thrill as the piggy feared elder brother kills about 5 people and then pisses himself, but then it settles down into just low-level unpleasantness over 300 pages. It sort of strains credulity that the guy can't buy aspirin without being barred from the chemist for life. Plot is a satire of crap American lit of successful academic with hollow life learns to love again. I mean, they say he's learnt but he just sort of meekly has stuff imposed on him by the aforesaid unpleasant people. They load this sap up with pets, children, a girlfriend, even somebody else's parents by the end ("it's just a random collection of people!" a grandmother in law remarks on the concluding thanksgiving dinner. I guess I'm meant to smile wryly but, you know, it really just is). I think he's meant to be moving away from materialism but every loving good deed this guy does he's rewarded with stacks of untaxable cash so I'm not sure that's it. The prose is leaden and she thinks that if a joke's good once it's good ten or more so times. Just garbage. 2 28 Of Human Bondage by W. Somerset Maugham. Yeah, that's the stuff. 29 One Man's Meat by E.B. White. Likable enough series of essays, mostly about farming though occasionally he'll talk about the rise of Hitler or America's place in the world. 30 Peace by Gene Wolfe. How do you make closely written childhood memories and theorizing about the nature of truth sci-fi? Sketch a vague framing device and imply some nuclear event. A fun book. 8 31 Northanger Abbey by Jane Austen. Maybe sorta light, also my copy didn't have any notes so I didn't get most of the literary parodies. 32 Clouds of Witness by Dorothy L. Sayers. I'm never smart enough to actually read these to solve them but I just like the characterization of Whimsey. 33 Jamaica Inn by Daphne DuMaurier. It was pointed out to me I've never read any of hers even though it'd take five minutes. Super broad-strokes in everything but she achieves her effects. I really should have read this like... a decade and change ago. 33 Devoted Ladies by M.J. Farrell (Molly Keane). Never heard of her but the publisher puts out some good stuff so I thought it was worth a tug. I had to go back and read the introduction because I wasn't sure what I had just read. A lesbian couple where the butch Jessica torments the lovely Jane to liver-failure, and go on holiday to Ireland where they meet June and, breaking the theme, Piggy who also seem to have a thing going. Published 1934 and without a subsequent obscenity case so things are... well not fuzzy, just absent. Apart from the fact that they hate each other you wouldn't know they're together. Occasionally has great breaks of descriptive fancy and is filled with grotesques. 19 34 Portrait of a Marriage by Vita Sackville-West and Nigel Nicolson. Structurally a very interesting book, as Nige discovered his mother's confession of a disastrous lesbian affair and polished it up for publication. She goes in for fairy-tale romanticizing and he comes in to account for the facts. Which is handy as one sort of gets lost in the fug of family scandals in Vita's text which Nigel manages to pin down quite neatly. Lord Seery, for instance, is first presented as colossal balloon of a person, filled with joy and laughter who was always a joy to the child Vita when he visited (though she was briefed he must be rolled discretely to another room in case he falls dead in front of her mother's bedroom door). Then Nigel comes in with some conservative estimates about any relationship between him and his grandmother ("some patting") before moving in to the financial gifts and ensuing court-case over his will. So it's a broken-backed narrative, with the flush of emotion followed by what actually happened 30 pages later, with a coda added about how they were, against appearances, a very happy married couple, along with a couple of shoe-horned mentions of Virginia Woolf. 35 Emma by Jane Austen. Finishing off my birthday present. About 30 pages in I recognized that I had read this before, but still, very good. Austen writes selfish people well. 35/60 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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Apr 30, 2016 00:28
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I am now *way* past 20 books, so I should remedy that. 16) The Copper Crown - Patricia Kennealy-Morrison: A mixture of futuristic science fiction and Celtic (Irish / Welsh) mythology. This was the first book published, but the second in the series as a prequel was written later. Worth a read if interested in: Celtic mythology, science fiction, well-written characters. 4/5. 17) Sorcerer of the Wildeeps – Kai Ashante Wilson: A novella set in a world of magical realism and modern vernacular. Worth a read if interested in: progressive politics, complex writing. 4/5. 18) The Traitor Baru Cormorant – Seth Dickinson: Holy crap, this book is excellent. How many other science fiction books have an economist as the protagonist? (Not many). The fact that this book wasn't nominated for either a Nebula or a Hugo is criminal. Worth a read if interested in: Dune-esque political machinations, economics, progressive characterisation. 5/5. 19) The Thrilling Adventures of Lovelace and Babbage: The (Mostly) True Story of the First Computer – Sydney Padua: A fictionalised graphic novel of Ada Lovelace and Charles Babbage getting up to shenanigans. Worth a read if interested in: history (especially 19th-century), footnotes. 4/5. 20) Ancillary Mercy – Ann Leckie: The final book in the Imperial Radch trilogy, and possibly the best one. By now, one has had time to get used to the series’ quirks, and it’s the book with the most action. Very much a Marmite series. Worth a read if interested in: science fiction, action, subtlety, tea. 4/5. 21) The Dark Forest - Cixin Liu: The sequel to The Three-Body Problem. I don't have much to say about it. 4/5. 22) Karen Memory - Elizabeth Bear: A book set in 19th-century steampunk Seattle, starring a prostitute. Worth a read if interested in: alt-history, diversity (both racial and sexual), sewing. 4/5. 23) My Friend Dahmer - Derf Backderf: A graphic novel portrait of the titular serial killer from a guy who knew him in high school. Worth a read if interested in: Jeffrey Dahmer (duh), mental illness, teenagers. 4/5. 24) The Sisters Brothers - Patrick DeWitt: A story of two 19th-century assassins, Charlie and Eli Sisters, who are working towards killing a guy in California. Reminiscent of Deadwood. Worth a read if interested in: the Wild West, hired killers, dry sarcasm. Trigger warning: animal abuse. 4/5. 25) Marbles: Mania, Depression, Michelangelo and Me - Ellen Forney: In which the titular artist describes her life dealing with bipolar disorder and the medical struggles involved. Worth a read if interested in: graphic novels, mental illness, creativity. 4/5. 26) Jerusalem - Guy Delisle: In which the titular graphic novelist lives for a while in Jerusalem, working on his art and dealing with Israel and family life. Worth a read if interested in: Judaism, Israel, religion. 4/5. 27) Mutiny - Lindsey Collen: In a prison in Mauritius, three women await the arrival of a cyclone. Worth a read if interested in: obscure books, politics, food. 4/5. 28) Voices from Chernobyl: The Oral History of a Nuclear Disaster - Svetlana Alexievich: In which the author interviews people from Chernobyl and surrounding areas in Belarus about the effects of the nuclear disaster. V. topical, as it is the thirtieth anniversary of Chernobyl this year. Cannot wait for more Alexievich books to be translated (or re-printed, in the case of her book about female Soviet soldiers in World War Two). Worth a read if interested in: the Soviet Union, nuclear reactors, history. 4/5. 29) Leviathan - Ian Edginton: In which weird stuff happens on a giant cruise ship. Worth a read if interested in: Titanic-esque cruise ships, religion, chiaroscuro art. 3.5 (4)/5. 30) A Little Life - Hanya Yanagihara: People kept talking about how emotionally tough this book is, and they were right. Worth a read if interested in: male friendships, New York, child abuse. 4/5.
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Apr 30, 2016 02:04
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Total: 13/52 Female authors: 4/24 Non-Fiction: 2/12 Arabian Nights: 2/10(16) Still way behind on all my goals, and I didn't even read anything particularly good this month. Not saying Macbeth isn't a good play, BTW, I haven't seen it. It's just a poo poo read, because it's a play. I would never choose to read a play and only did so because it was assigned reading for a class. Ransom was also assigned reading, and it was OK, but didn't really do a lot for me. Crucible was a book I'd been looking forward to and which turned out to be a huge disappointment. I read (and really enjoyed) Crossfire last year, so if this one had just been more of the same it would have been exactly what I was looking for, but unfortunately it isn't. This is a sequel that doesn't need to exist. Terrible Old Games was the only one I actually enjoyed this month, and it's basically just Ashen's YouTube channel in book form. It's short, it's amusing, but there's not a lot to it. I'd recommend it if you like his videos and want more of the same, but if you don't already know who he is then you're probably not the target audience for this book. See my Goodreads for full reviews.
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Apr 30, 2016 08:28
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April update! 1) Vanilla Number - 8/30 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 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 Genneration 20) Read a banned book 22) It’s a Mystery. 1. War and Peace, Leo Tolstoy 2. The Silent Cry, Kenzaburo Oe 3. Aurora det niende mørke, hymne og myte, Stein Mehren 4. The Bell Jar, Sylvia Plath 5. Mourning Diary, Roland Barthes 6. Death in Venice and Other Stories, Thomas Mann 7. Is-slottet, Tarjei Vesaas 8. En dag i oktober, Sigurd Hoel the collection of subject matter wasn't too bright this month. for the most part, stories and books dealing with death, loneliness and otherness. Mourning Diary is a journal Barthes kept in the year following his mother's death, from the day she died to about a year and a half later. He deals with reflections on what sorrow and morurning is, what this loss of a loved one does to him, and so on. it was pretty interesting and well recommended. Death in Venice is a bunch of short stories by Thomas Mann, and every story deals with some tragic figure of some sort. The first one plays heavily with the Hunchback thematics, and many of the stories ends with a suicide. The title story is kind of a murder mystery. Is-slottet, or The Ice Palace, is about two 10-11 year old girls and the emotional struggle they go through, dealing with being different as well as death itself. The last one, A Day in October reminded me of Life, a user's manual, since they were rather similar in style or at least concept. They both build the story around tenants in an apartment building. Sigurd Hoel makes their stories a lot more intertwined than Perec did, however. And the key narrative in Hoel's book is a lot more dramatic than Perec's. ulvir fucked around with this message at 23:11 on Apr 30, 2016 |
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Apr 30, 2016 20:13
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April update. Previously: 1. White Line Fever by Lemmy Kilmister. 2. Slåttekar i himmelen by Edvard Hoem. 3. Half the World by Joe Abercrombie. 4. Three Men in a Boat by Jerome K. Jerome. 5. I Don't: A Contrarian History of Marriage by Susan Squire. 6. Anabasis by Xenophon. 7.-9. The Apocalypse Triptych: The End is Nigh, The End is Now, The End has Come edited by John Joseph Adams and Hugh Howey. 10. Sweet Thursday by John Steinbeck. 11. Gentleman Jole and the Red Queen by Lois McMaster Bujold. 12. Red Rising by Pierce Brown. 13. Demon Dentist by David Walliams. New: 14. The Name of the Rose by Umberto Eco. Read this at least a couple of times before but the last time was quite a few years ago already so no harm in a reread. This has stood as my "if I had to choose one favourite book..." for like twenty years and still does; I could gush and gush but won't bother. It's basically perfect. Took me forever to complete though since these several weeks have been hosed as far as private reading time goes. 15. Half a War by Joe Abercrombie. #3 and last in its trilogy; putatively YA (although with Abercrombie that doesn't mean much), post-apocalyptic (more clearly so than in books #1 and #2) fantasy. Good poo poo, saw a couple of the plot twists coming but not all of them. 16. Plain Tales from the Hills by Rudyard Kipling. A collection of short stories written early in the man's career, lots of little amusing slice-of-life bits from colonial India where the British empire is mainly seen as a Good Thing but not universally a competent thing. Quite readable although reading it all in a row was a bit much. 17. Doktor Proktors Prompepulver by Jo Nesbø. Title translates as "Dr. Proctor's Fart Powder"; a children's/young adult book by a big-name Norwegian author who is otherwise mostly known for very gritty crime drama (part of the Scandinavian Noir thing). Read this aloud to my seven-year-old and am bloody well counting it as it's over 200 pages and it's a pretty funny read for an adult as well. The plot involves a benign mad scientist who invents a powder that makes people fart hard enough to potentially send them into orbit. It's much less vulgar than that makes it sound, although it does also involve man-eating sewer anacondas and stuff. Am currently halfway through Acceptance by Jeff VanderMeer, obviously not going to finish it before the end of the month (which in my time zone happened while I was typing up this post). Booklord challenge: 1) Vanilla Number - 17/40 2) Something written by a woman- I Don't, Gentleman Jole and the Red Queen 3) Something Written by a nonwhite author 4) Something written in the 1800s - Three Men in a Boat, Plain Tales from the Hills 5) Something History Related (fictional or non-fiction your choice) - Slåttekar i himmelen, Anabasis, The Name of the Rose 6) A book about or narrated by an animal 7) A collection of essays. 8) A work of Science Fiction - much of The Apocalypse Triptych, Gentleman Jole and the Red Queen, Red Rising, Half a War 9) Something written by a musician - White Line Fever 10) Read a long book, something over 500 pages - The Name of the Rose 11) Read something about or set in NYC 12) Read Airplane fiction (Patterson, ect) 13) Read Something YA - Half the World, Red Rising, Half a War 14) Wildcard! - I Don't 15) Something recently published (up to a year. The year will be the day you start this challenge) - Half the World, Half a War 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 - Red Rising 18) A biography or autobiography - White Line Fever 19) Read something from the lost generation (Fitzgerald, Hemmingway, ect.) or from the Beat Genneration - Sweet Thursday 20) Read a banned book 21) A Short Story collection - all volumes of The Apocalypse Triptych 22) It’s a Mystery.- The Name of the Rose Additional individual challenge: Norwegians: 2/10 Non-fiction: 3/5 Max re-reads: 2/5 BONUS INDIVIDUAL CHALLENGE: What the hell, I've followed the BOTM for both January and February; I'm going to keep doing that for the rest of the year. (Escape clause: Will reserve the option to skip books I've already read.) Still 4 for 4 on this although it took me a good chunk of April to finish the BOTM for March.
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Apr 30, 2016 23:04
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April I can’t believe I read 8 books. Three of them were really short. One was really bad. The Story of a New Name by Elena Ferrante This continues the Neapolitan series, book 2 and was even better than the first. I had to pace myself with these books otherwise I probably would have read them all this month. I felt the writing in this one changed a bit for the better and had a few sections where it isn’t just her telling the story, it’s her telling things from the point of view of other characters and from a diary. Anyway, I am going to start the third book next, can’t wait, as these are probably my books of the year, this last one especially. Patriot Games by Tom Clancy This was the worst book I have ever read, it was terrible. I read it because it is a well known book by a well known author and it fits the airport fiction requirement. Jack Ryan as a character is the least interesting person I have ever read in a book. The other characters are just as boring. I can’t believe something like this was made in to a movie. Awful. I would post some examples, but I think I am the last person to realize that Clancy is a bad writer. Strong Poison by Lord Peter Wimsey This book had the advantage of coming up on the heels of Patriot Games, so by comparison, this was a masterpiece. I originally chose this for the mystery requirement, but I already fulfilled that one with Name of the Rose, but I had already purchased it, and I liked another one of these books, so I read it. It was witty, funny, interesting, and well written. I was surprised how many times I laughed out loud while reading this. Good mystery, really good. The Secret Garden by Frances Hodgson Burnett I loved this book. I read it as a young child and some of the imagery from the book always kind of stuck with me, but I didn’t really remember the book itself and wanted to read it. It Was charming and made me feel good. Three Men in a Boat (To say nothing of the Dog!) by Jerome K. Jerome I put this on my book list when I saw it as the book of the month, but just now got around to it. It’s very clever and funny. I think the humor in the stories he tells makes this book something amazing. The story about the cheese, about the smell of the cooking oil, the fishing stories, they were all great. The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle by Murakami, Haruki I liked this book a lot more than I thought I would. I am not sure it was the actual story that made this book a good read, but the stories of all the characters that come and go in the book. Everyone has a story to tell and they are all interesting, sometimes spanning several chapters, one after another, and sometimes popping up now and then through letters in other chapters. The main charter who tells the story I can’t say is very interesting at all, nor does he even have a back story like everyone he meets, I guess he is just kind of there to tell the story. Sometimes I felt like this book could just go on and on forever, introducing new characters, adding their stories to the overall narrative, and tying them in sometimes loosely and sometimes directly with the other stories. It did end though, and that was probably the least interesting part of the book. The Old Man and the Sea by Ernest Hemmingway A nice short story I very much enjoyed. Maybe if it took more than an hour to read I would have been bored, but it was a quick and easy read that I decided to take on after a book a started reading didn’t turn out to be something I wanted to read. The Vegetarian by Han Kang This was weird, and I guess I didn’t entirely get the point. It wasn’t like it was difficult to understand, and it was well written, but I guess after reading it I felt like I missed something. In fact the whole time I was reading it I was wondering where it was going, and it kind of ended up going nowhere. The title refers to a woman who after having a dream, she decodes to stop eating meat, but that isn’t even the real issue with her. She detaches herself from her husband (who is a terrible person anyway) and her family (who aren’t much better) and life in general. The point of view from which the story is told changes throughout the book, and sometimes in the same section of the book, in the first half at least. It’s really short and pretty interesting, but still kind of left me feeling that I missed the point. Maybe the story is just a view of a person dealing with mental illness and how it affects people closer to her, and their responsibility for her condition. I mean, besides her sister, they are all terrible people.For some reason I thought it was going to be something else. Now that I think back, I did like it, I think my pre-conceived notions spoiled it. Vanilla Number 30/50 Something Written by a nonwhite author A collection of essays. Read Something YA A biography or autobiography Rusty fucked around with this message at 05:22 on May 1, 2016 |
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May 1, 2016 04:05
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April 17. City of Stairs- Robert Jackson Bennett. Loved this. Really cool fantasy exploration of the relationship between gods and people and belief, plus the main character is pretty much secret agent Indiana Jones. 18. Notorious RBG: The Life and Times of Ruth Bader Ginsburg- Irin Carmon 19. Sunshine- Robin McKinley. Utter garbage. Pages upon pages of dull exposition, often inserted in the most narrative pace-destroying way. The main character literally stops in the middle of stabbing a vampire to talk about vampire killing history for like 10 pages, because that's a great way to write an exciting action sequence. Hated this immensely. 20. The Story of Kullervo- JRR Tolkien. This is a newly published book of Tolkien's early adaptation/re-writing of a Finnish folk tale. The main character, Kullervo, and his family are taken in bondage when he is an infant. He is eventually sold away for being a huge dick, returns to get revenge, and along the way meets and sleeps with his sister, whom he doesn't recognize. When he realizes her identity he throws himself on his sword. As you can probably guess, this was the basis of Tolkien's story of Turin. The actual book wasn't incredible (the story is pretty primitive and the book includes two copies of a speech Tolkien made about the collection of folk tales from which the story of Kullvero originates. The speeches are basically exactly the same so their inclusion is a little puzzling), but if you're a big stupid Tolkien nerd like I am it's a neat insight into Middle Earth mythology. 21. Mind of My Mind- Octavia Butler 22. Patternmaster- Octavia Butler 23-25. The Lord of the Rings- JRR Tolkien. These are my favorite books and I reread them every year. See above comment about being a big stupid nerd.
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May 1, 2016 05:12
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April - 5: 25. A God in Ruins (Kate Atkinson) 26. Dead Souls (Nikolai Gogol) 27. Perdido Street Station (China Miéville) 28. A Little Life (Hanya Yanagihara) 29. Pride and Prejudice (Jane Austen) I slowed down a little this month and only read 5 books. Two of those were 867 and 720 pages, though, so I probably read about the same amount overall. A God in Ruins I liked a lot. I haven't read Life After Life; this is technically a sequel to that but really apart from sharing some characters nobody involved seems to think it matters if you've read the other one or not (since the gimmick of the first one is that it tells multiple mutually-exclusive stories about the same character's life, it's not like there's a continuity that comes into play). Whatever the case, this was excellent - it moves freely around time and space, picking up different moments in its characters' lives. Early on, you see what the end-point is for most of them - Teddy as an old man, his daughter and grandchildren as adults - and the book is about exploring what made them that way, told through these little vignettes. The combination of the different periods which form the narrative around the central story, of Teddy's experiences in the Second World War, is very effective, and Atkinson has clearly put a lot of time into researching the war and putting a fresh twist on what has the potential to be a very tired retreading. I'm not sure how I felt about the ending - it fits with Life After Life and the overall approach to fiction which Atkinson was driving at, but it also felt a bit cheap. The strength of the preceding novel is too great to be held back by it though. Dead Souls was not what I expected at all. I don't think I knew anything about it before I bought it except the title, and what I didn't expect was how loving funny this book is. Gogol is brutal towards his characters and the Russian society they represent. It's a shame that we only have a bit of volume 2 and nothing of volume 3 left, but what's present in the first volume and the remainder of the second is great. Perdido Street Station was a bloody monster of a book, but it whipped by. I haven't read any Miéville for a while and I'd forgotten how incredibly weird his writing is - he just full-bores in there with insect women and cactus dudes and hosed up magicscience stuff. The story's compelling though and I feel like the characters in this were more fully fleshed out than stuff of his I'd read before, although they're still subservient to the allegory he's making and the plot. The guy definitely has tics which pull you out of it occasionally - the words "puissance" and "pugnacious" need to be excised from his vocabulary asap - but this was fun sci-fantasy written by someone who can actually write, which elevates it above 95% of the genre immediately. A Little Life was goddamn brutal and it made me cry, which never happens. It's definitely flawed - some passages felt like they were piling on for the sake of it because More Bad = Sadder, and I would have liked a better balance in the characters instead of the hard focus on Jude that emerges after the first 100ish pages - but overall it worked. I particularly liked the depiction of male friendship as something deep, meaningful and complete in itself - I think it's a theme that is very often passed by, and Yanagihara handles it spectacularly. Woman can really write, too; parts of this were beautiful even though the events were relentlessly grim. Pride and Prejudice was a strange beast for me. I ground through the first hundred pages or so without much joy, went through the next hundred starting to get it, and in the last hundred found myself enjoying it a lot. Like Gogol, I didn't realise before how funny Austen is. In particular, the mirroring of Mrs Bennett and Lady Catherine de Bourgh - opposites in social rank but united in being tasteless, rude and openly grasping - was genius. I don't know if I'm necessarily going to dive into more Austen, but I'm glad I read this. Booklord wise, A God in Ruins was over 500 pages (equally applicable to either of Perdido Street or A Little Life too). Perdido Street Station is the first Bas-Lag book, so that's first in a series down too. That's it for this month - I'm starting to get down to the categories I need to buy things especially for instead of mining my to-read pile, although I still have a few more I can cover off. Year to Date - 29: Booklord: 2-6, 8, 10-12, 15-19 01. Death and the Penguin (Andrey Kurkov) 6 02. Kitchen (Banana Yoshimoto) 2 03. Sky Burial (Xinran) 3 04. The Shining (Stephen King) 16 05. Come As You Are: The Story of Nirvana (Michael Azerrad) 18 06. A Case of Exploding Mangoes (Mohammed Hanif) 12 07. A Visit from the Goon Squad (Jennifer Egan) 11 08. King of the World (David Remnick) 09. Norwegian Wood (Haruki Murakami) 10. Ubik (Philip K. Dick) 8 11. The Vegetarian (Han Kang) 15 12. Waiting for the Barbarians (J.M. Coetzee) 13. John Crow's Devil (Marlon James) 14. Anna Karenina (Leo Tolstoy) 4 15. The Dream Life of Sukhanov (Olga Grushin) 16. Farewell, Cowboy (Olja Savicevic) 17. A History of Sparta 950-192BC (W.G. Forrest) 5 18. The Kite Runner (Khaled Hosseini) 19. The Guest Cat (Takashi Hiraida) 20. The Book of Memory (Petina Gappah) 21. The Old Man and the Sea (Ernest Hemingway) 19 22. Fury (Salman Rushdie) 23. Ninja (John Man) 24. Concrete Island (JG Ballard) 25. A God in Ruins (Kate Atkinson) 10 26. Dead Souls (Nikolai Gogol) 27. Perdido Street Station (China Mieville) 17 28. A Little Life (Hanya Yanagihara) 29. Pride and Prejudice (Jane Austen)
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May 1, 2016 11:49
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April. 19. Forty Stories. Anton Chekhov. Great stories, some better than others, but still great. 20. Doomsday Book. Connie Willis. Mediocre book, the setting is good but the characters and the prose are terrible. 21. Summer Knight. Jim Butcher. This would get a worse review if it wasn't a really fun book. Even with the terrible one-dimensional characters around Harry, the story makes up for it. 22. Quarantine. Greg Egan. Amazing story and good characters. Confusing at times but that means you have to read it a couple of times, like me. 23. The Monk. Matthew Gregory Lewis. The story is kind of simple, I wish the author wouldn't have wasted so much time. Only some characters are good, the others are plain. 24. The Magician's Land. Lev Grossman. Pretty good book. The characters are interesting even if I didn't remember a bunch of them from the first novels, the story ranges from very good to a slug, but everything works out. Even all those parts were we only listen to the characters explaining their story... Booklord challenge 1) Vanilla Number 24/60 4) Something written in the 1800s 6) A book about or narrated by an animal 7) A collection of essays. 9) Something written by a musician 11) Read something about or set in NYC 12) Read Airplane fiction (Patterson, ect) 14) Wildcard! 15) Something recently published 18) A biography or autobiography 19) Read something from the lost generation (Fitzgerald, Hemmingway, ect.) or from the Beat Genneration
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May 1, 2016 17:24
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Bandiet posted:7. The Complete Stories by Franz Kafka 8. The Blind Owl by Sadegh Hedayat. This book wasn't very cool. It was often macabre with plenty of beautiful imagery, but I think it didn't handle the "descent into madness" feeling very well, which was kind of the whole point. 9. Kafka Translated by Michelle Woods. A really great analysis of the role of the translator in literature, particularly the way Kafka translators have viewed themselves and their work. 10. Some Haystacks Don't Even Have Any Needle, compiled by Stephen Dunning. A good introductory volume to postmodern poetry with several poets I didn't know about. Also a few very bad poems, but that's fitting. 11. One Of Us by Åsne Seierstad. Simply written non-fiction with a sensationalist style that would normally be a major turn-off, but I still cried at the climax because I'm a wisp who can't stomach irl murder. 12. Once On A Time by AA Milne. Excellent to read a standalone novel by the great Milne, after so much familiarity with his stories and poems. It has the same adorable humor sensibilities of Winnie-the-Pooh mixed with some Swiftish satire. 13. Scenes From Village Life by Amos Oz. Somebody in a blurb said that its "novel as short stories" format meant the stories were much more moving together than separate, but I didn't think so. They were each very odd and beautiful slices of life, but trying to put them together just felt like a headache. Much like Daniel Handler's Adverbs. Vanilla Number: 13/75 Something written by a woman: Kafka Translated Read a long book, something over 500 pages: One Of Us That one book you've wanted to read for a while now: The Blind Owl Bandiet fucked around with this message at 16:41 on Nov 3, 2016 |
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May 1, 2016 18:57
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