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Hey y'all, I need a wild card. Anyone?
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Oct 24, 2016 18:17
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Ben Nevis posted:Hey y'all, I need a wild card. Anyone? The Atrocity Exhibition, JG Ballard.
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Oct 25, 2016 11:08
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I have read 69 books this year, OP
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Oct 26, 2016 05:27
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Corrode posted:The Atrocity Exhibition, JG Ballard. Hell yesssssssssss. My October update: quote:1 - Daft Wee Stories, by Limmy (Brian Limond) I read four(ish) books in October. 54 - Player Piano, by Kurt Vonnegut. Another one I forgot to log from earlier this year. Really good early Vonnegut about a fully-automated future, while also a very 50s one. 55 - Selected Unpublished Blog Posts Of A Mexican Panda Express Employee, by Megan Boyle. Pretty much what the title suggests, this reads very much like browsing a random twentysomething's old blog posts. Unfortunately, it's a twentysomething I didn't wind up liking very much. Published by Muumuu House, Tao Lin's indie small press, it has the same kind of tone as a lot of Lin's work - listlessness, self-doubt, a sparse, blunt prose style that at the same time feels wishy-washy in the extreme. There are a few genuinely great entries, but Boyle's day-to-day thoughts are monotonous and mundane enough that I found myself making any excuse not to read more. I found it really disappointing. 56 - Empire Of The Sun, by JG Ballard. Based on his childhood experience in Japanese-occupied Shanghai during WWII, this is a deep and grim and oddly sweet story. Survival, desperation, the dehumanisation of war and imprisonment, and the alternate reality that the young protagonist builds in response to his predicament. Ballard's prose is excellent as always, blending the mundane observations of daily life with the warped terror of violence, illness and decay. This is an important book for a reason, and just as gripping and grim as I anticipated. 57 - Right Ho, Jeeves!, by PG Wodehouse. My first time actually reading Wodehouse, and it's exactly as cosy and silly as I expected. Of course due to cultural osmosis I was unable to hear anything but Hugh Laurie and Stephen Fry's voices in my head while reading. What I should have anticipated were the jarring moments of casual racism, which were abrupt enough to shock me out of the otherwise fun and engrossing prose. The story is typical comedy-of-errors farce, full of miscommunication and schemes gone awry, and Wodehouse has an excellent command of comic writing and the pleasures of language. A warm, feel-good novel, minus the wince-inducing whiteness. Fuller reviews up on my GoodReads, as always. 2) At least 40% (23) by a woman - 25 - 4, 5, 8, 10, 11, 13, 15, 17, 18, 19, 23, 25, 27, 28, 30, 31, 34, 35, 37, 45, 46, 47, 50, 53, 55 13) Read Something YA - 14) Wildcard! (City of Stairs) 19) Read something from the lost generation (Fitzgerald, Hemingway, etc.) or from the Beat Generation - 20) Read a banned book -
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Oct 29, 2016 13:42
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Buddy, can you spare a wildcard?
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Oct 29, 2016 15:16
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Talas posted:Buddy, can you spare a wildcard? AS Byatt - Ragnarok?
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Oct 29, 2016 17:03
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Gertrude Perkins posted:AS Byatt - Ragnarok?
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Oct 29, 2016 18:34
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53. Alias Grace by Margaret Atwood (Literature) 54. The Heart of the Buddha's Teaching by Thich Nhat Hanh (Nonfiction) 55. Thinking in Pictures: And other reports from My Life with Autism by Temple Grandin (Nonfiction) 56. Run by Kody Keplinger 57. Marrow Island by Alexis M. Smith (Literature) 58. The Road by Cormac McCarthy (Literature) 59. The Speed of Dark by Elizabeth Moon 60. Feminism is for Everybody by bell hooks (Nonfiction) 61. Don't Touch by Rachel M Wilson 62. The Days of Abandonment by Elena Ferrante (Literature) 63. Chime by Franny Billingsley 64. Everything I Never Told You by Celeste Ng (Literature) 65. Everything Leads to You by Nina LaCour 65/52, 36/65 Literature, 8 Nonfiction books Alias Grace was good, but I think Atwood is good. I should read more Atwood. THotBT took me forever to get through because it is really long. I think I started it in the early summer? It's worthwhile, but dense. The Temple Grandin book is interesting, however, several notes of caution. One, the diagnoses in this book are very outdated, and a lot of people in the autism community disagree with Grandin on some stuff which I think may have been in this book. If you go in with that in mind, I think it's an interesting read. Run was YA, and pretty good. Marrow Island was a book written by Alexis M. Smith, who wrote Glaciers, which I really liked. This wasn't bad, but I didn't like it as much. The Road was brutal, but I was really distracted by the punctuation usage. I kept trying to decide what dictated when an apostrophe would appear. I know that's a weird thing to get hung up on. The Speed of Dark is a SF book about an autism cure and it made me really sad. I wrote a bummed out goodreads review about it. Feminism is for Everybody is pretty much the book you give someone if they don't get what feminism is, or if they haven't read a lot about feminism or intersectional feminism. I think a lot of people can still get something out of it. Don't Touch is a YA book about a girl with OCD. The Days of Abandonment was the first Ferrante book I read, and it was after that one rear end in a top hat doxxed her. But man it was dark. Chime is a YA book. Everything I never told you was an interesting one. I saw a lot of disappointed reviews on GoodReads and I think I know why. I think the book acting like it's a mystery is a flaw. I think the book is much more interesting if you focus on the grief and not the "Did she kill herself?" Everything leads to you is lesbian YA. Well, I'll confess I wasn't going out of my way to read literary books, which this month shows, but I'm still on track.
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Oct 31, 2016 13:34
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Somehow forgot to post a September update so this is for both September and October. 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. 14. The Name of the Rose by Umberto Eco. 16. Plain Tales from the Hills by Rudyard Kipling. 17. Doktor Proktors Prompepulver by Jo Nesbø. 18. Acceptance by Jeff VanderMeer. 19. The Temple of the Golden Pavilion by Yukio Mishima. 20. Før jeg brenner ned by Gaute Heivoll. 21. Billionaire Boy by David Walliams. 22. Children of Time by Adrian Tchaikovsky. 23. The Quiet Game by Greg Iles. 24. The Vegetarian by Han Kang. 25. Maurtuemordene by Hans Olav Lahlum. 26. Luna: New Moon by Ian McDonald. 27. Destroyermen: Blood in the Water by Taylor Anderson. 28. Gangsta Granny by David Walliams. 29. The Nightmare Stacks by Charles Stross. 30. The Long Way to a Small Angry Planet by Becky Chambers. 31. Lud-in-the-Mist by Hope Mirrlees. 32. Ratburger by David Walliams. 33. Sønnen ("The Son") by Jon Nesbø. 34. Svein og rotta i syden by Marit Nicolaysen. 35. Døden ved vann ("Death by water") by Torkil Damhaug. 36. Ildmannen ("The Man of Fire" would be a good translation) by Torkil Damhaug. 37. Pale Fire by Vladimir Nabokov. New: 38. Stoner by John Williams. A low-key portrayal of the life of an obscure American academic mostly across the first half of the 20th century. Beautiful, quiet book, originally published in 1965 and then sort of rediscovered in more recent years. 39. Siddhartha by Hermann Hesse. BOTM for September. Arguably a case of "eastern religious philosophy for dumb westerners 101" from the 1920s, but drat, it was a pretty enjoyable read. 40. Thornghost by Tone Almhjell. YA fantasy by a "new" Norwegian author, this is actually her second book to be published. The author was in my circle of nerd friends in high school and we spent many hours playing D&D and Shadowrun and watching movies and stuff, so I cannot be impartial. I do think these are pretty great, though. Basically "portal fantasy" where the protagonists are kids from our world and the secondary world is inhabited by anthropomorphic reincarnations of dead pets (and, it turns out, other types of creatures). Far less fruity, and darker and more scary, than this makes it sound. (Interestingly, her books are published in both Norwegian and English versions simultaneously -- the only case I know of where the author either translates everything herself, or rather writes both versions in parallel so that there isn't really an original version.) 41. The Boy in the Dress by David Walliams. His first novel and a bit different in tone from the others we've read -- a tiny bit more serious and less comical. Main character is a pre-teen boy living with his divorced father and older brother, in a home where emotions are not allowed to be expressed (nor is it allowed to even mention their absent mother). Randomly, he discovers that enjoys dressing up in women's clothing. This is initially not accepted by those in authority but eventually they are made to see the light. Read this aloud to my 8-year-old and I'm sure a lot of it went over his head; but he did enjoy it and I guess it was a pretty good introduction to the existence of sexuality-based slurs and how they are not okay to use. 42. Right Ho, Jeeves by P.G. Wodehouse. BOTM for October and a smashing good read, what. Actually my first Wodehouse as far as I can remember. Lovely language, funny characters, ridiculous complications. 43. Bad Feminist by Roxane Gay. A collection of essays (mostly pretty short ones) by this Haitian-American academic/cultural type person with whom I was previously unfamiliar. I am now reasonably familiar with her opinions on a variety of subjects which range from the personal to the political and the portrayal of minorities in the media and whatnot. Seems like a pretty cool smart lady and most of the essays were interesting to read, a bit meandering though. If it seems like I've encountered a slowdown, it is because I am also in the process of reading Jerusalem by Alan Moore, which I started in the middle of September and I'm not yet done -- currently at the 71% mark (which is in the middle of THAT chapter). Am determined to finish. Also have some left of The Big Book of Science Fiction. Booklord challenge: 1) Vanilla Number - 43/40 2) Something written by a woman- I Don't, Gentleman Jole and the Red Queen, The Vegetarian, The Long Way to a Small Angry Planet, Lud-in-the-Mist, Svein og rotta i syden, Thornghost, Bad Feminist 3) Something Written by a nonwhite author - Temple of the Golden Pavilion, The Vegetarian, Bad Feminist 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 - Thornghost 7) A collection of essays. - Bad Feminist 8) A work of Science Fiction - much of The Apocalypse Triptych, Gentleman Jole and the Red Queen, Red Rising, Half a War, Acceptance, Children of Time, Luna: New Moon, others 9) Something written by a musician - White Line Fever 10) Read a long book, something over 500 pages - The Name of the Rose, The Quiet Game 11) Read something about or set in NYC 12) Read Airplane fiction (Patterson, ect) - Sønnen definitely qualifies for this 13) Read Something YA - Half the World, Red Rising, Half a War, Thornghost 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, Children of Time, Luna: New Moon 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, The Quiet Game, Luna: New Moon 18) A biography or autobiography - White Line Fever, Før jeg brenner ned 19) Read something from the lost generation (Fitzgerald, Hemmingway, ect.) or from the Beat Generation - 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, The Quiet Game, Maurtuemordene, Sønnen, Døden ved vann, Ildmannen Additional individual challenge: Norwegians: 8/10 Non-fiction: 4/5 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.) 10 for 10 on this. Two months left of the year, have passed the raw numerical target, only missing two booklord challenge points, two Norwegian books and one non-fiction book... looks good.
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Oct 31, 2016 13:35
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Ben Nevis posted:1. My Dead Body by Charlie Huston. Only 5 books this month, but there were some good ones. And I crossed off a book written by a musician. I've got my Wildcard requested through ILL and am ready to get through challenges 14, 19, and 20 this coming month. Wahoo! 70. The Last Days of New Paris by China Mieville - An alternate history/weird fiction type thing. A bomb is detonated in Nazi occupied Paris that gives life to surreal artwork. This really reminded me of some Sean Stewart, particularly Night Watch and Galveston. I enjoyed this. You probably will too if you like Mieville or want to read a short book has a lot of references to surreal art. 71. The Book of the Dun Cow by Walter Wangerin Jr - A proud rooster defends his coop against the dark forces of the Wyrm. This book definitely had sort of a medieval feel. You could almost see it listed alongside Pilgrim's Progress or whatnot. It was however, really good. It took me a bit to get into, but in the end I really enjoyed it. If you can take some religion in your talking rooster stories, this is for you. 72. Everfair by Nisi Shawl - "Steampunk" set in King Leopold's Belgian Congo. A group of Fabian socialists buys a large swath of the Congo to repatriate American slaves and to take in refugees from the rubber plantations. Naturally they run into problems with Leopold. The story is told somewhat like Asimov's Foundation series, where it mostly focuses on the critical parts of the colony's history, mostly it's war against Leopold, it's role in WW1, and eventually it's role within Africa and the conflict between colonizers and locals. The story suffers somewhat through this structure. I feel it could have been better had it focused a bit more. I also felt that Shawl's choice of what to show was not what I'd have picked. There are numerous instances of showing sort of the buildup to an issue and then the results, without ever address the actual resolution. That being said it's still an interesting book. 73. Underground Airlines by Ben H Winters - An alternate history set in the present day. Abraham Lincoln was assassinated as the president elect causing congress to go back and adopt the Crittenden Compromise. Economic pressures lead some states to voluntarily swear off slavery, but there are still the Hard 4, southern states where "People Bound to Labor" toil away as a free source of labor. Our protagonist is a former slave now working for the US Marshals as a catcher of fugitive slaves. I liked this. It has sort of a mystery/thriller vibe (unsurprisingly, as it's billed as a thrilling mystery). The world, to me, feels well realized, and draws some interesting parallels to actual modern day. 74. Crazy from the Heat by David Lee Roth - I've wanted to read this for forever. Not because of any enduring interest in Van Halen. Or David Lee Roth. Mostly because of NewsRadio where Bill gives Dave a copy for his birthday. As soon as I saw the challenge, I knew this was the book I was getting. This is not a great book if you want some sort of detailed timeline of Van Halen or some sort of "coherent narrative". If you want to feel like you're sitting around shooting the poo poo with Diamond Dave for awhile, this is the book you want. There were some moments where I genuinely laughed until I cried. What comes through more than anything is Dave's sense of showmanship. You get the distinct feeling that he lives in the crazy technicolor world from his videos. 1) Vanilla Number 74/45 2) Something written by a woman - 5, 7, 18, 17, 16, 21, 23, 26, 31, 32, 34, 35, 41, 42, 47, 52, 56, 64, 72 3) Something Written by a nonwhite author - 5, 16, 19, 22, 24, 31, 33, 39, 45, 48, 56, 62, 64, 65, 72 4) Something written in the 1800s - 14 5) Something History Related (fictional or non-fiction your choice)- 21, 31 6) A book about or narrated by an animal - 7, 12, 71 7) A collection of essays. 8) A work of Science Fiction - 6, 16, 19, 52, 54, 64, 69, 72, 73 9) Something written by a musician - 74 10) Read a long book, something over 500 pages - 2, 16, 69 11) Read something about or set in NYC - 1, 33, 34, 51 12) Read Airplane fiction (Patterson, ect) - 68 13) Read Something YA - 30 14) Wildcard! 15) Something recently published - 4, 7, 9, 10, 11, 15, 16, 19, 20, 21, 22, 23,24,25, 29, 35, 39, 45, 52, 57, 58, 59, 60, 63, 64, 65, 68, 69, 70, 72, 73 16) That one book you’ve wanted to read for a while now - 2, 6, 30, 74 17) The First book in a series - 13, 17, 18, 21, 25, 38, 49 18) A biography or autobiography - 28, 74 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 - 7, 11, 34, 41 22) It’s a Mystery - 15, 17, 24, 43, 48, 65, 73
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Oct 31, 2016 16:36
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October Books 65. The Black Count by Tom Reiss I enjoyed this a lot. As people probably know it is a biography of Alexandre Dumas' father who he put in his books in different forms, as well as his father's "enemies". Alexandre thought of his father as a hero and probably was even without the exaggerations by his son. It's set during the French revolution and has a good deal of French history mixed in as well as some surprising things about his father Thomas Alexandre. He was a black man in France, ended up being a general in the army and personally met with and spoke to Napoleon Bonaparte. 66. Solaris by Stanisław Lem This is a re-read. Still as good, one of my all time favorite sci-fi novels. if not books Simply amazing, a must read. 67. The Forever War by Joe Haldeman It was a good and easy read, but I think kind of forgettable. The jumps in time in books are fine to an extent, but I think like Death's End, can get tedious and break up the story too much. I did like it, but I don't think it will be something I think about a year from now. 68. Notes of a Native Son by James Baldwin This was good and is the final book in my booklord challenge. It's a collection of essays that talk about black experience in America and in Europe. He starts by talking about books and movies that he thinks are bad for black culture that think are doing a great service to it. He then moves more toward his experience with being a black man. I'm more in to fiction, so I kind of skimmed a lot of this and probably didn't give it the chance it deserves. 69. 1984 by George Orwell It's one of those books you know everything about and have always been meaning to read, but think you already know too much, so why bother. It was a good read though, I can see why it's so popular, it's well-written, a great story, and an interesting world that probably inspired many books since. I think maybe the book he read out of was kind of repetitive and not as great, but find. In that part of the book, it hammers concepts over and over in both sections. One of the more interesting aspects of reading great American Literature are the phrases that are still in use. Like down the memory hole, and the boot stomping on a face forever, there are probably more. Same was true of Moby Dick. 70. Right Ho, Jeeves! by P.G Wodehouse This was clever and funny. Jeeves is such a great character, the way he quietly defies Bertie by conspiring against his choice of jacket, to behind the scenes trying to clean up the messes Bertie creates. 71. The Ox-Bow Incidentby Walter Van Tilburg Clark Really really good book, I loved it. I loved almost everything about this book. It is the second western this year that blew me away, Warlock was the previous one. The writing, the western setting, the characters, everything fit together so well for a really good story. In a small run down western town, two men come come in to town as winter ends and the thaw starts and discover there has been someone stealing cattle. Early on, a cattle thief murders a well-loved rancher and the story gets going with a lynching party hungry for blood. It has as I have come to expect in good Westerns a lot of talk of justice and law and some philosophy mixed in. 72. Something Wicked This Way Comes by Ray Bradbury I read this for a late October book and it was good. The story is pretty straight forward, but it is peppered with this dreamy and almost poetic prose that gives it a completely different feel. One night on October 26th, a carnival rolls in to town and two boys who are best friends go out and watch them set up. It becomes clear something evil is going on and the boys become intimately involved in putting s stop to the plans of the people running the show. 73. The Color Purple by Alice Walkery This book was good at portraying life in America as a black woman during Jim Crow. Surprisingly uplifting after a really hard start for the main character and her sister. Good writing and a good story and a good read. The main character in this book is sent off to be married against her will by her father who doesn't seem to care for her other than for he work or other unmentionable things. Her and her sister are separated early on by the marriage and her sister's running away. Neither know the fate of the other while Celie, the main character deals with men who beat her and force her to work. Vanilla Number 73/50 I'm done with the booklord challenge.
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Oct 31, 2016 17:16
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October - 9: 62. A General Theory of Oblivion (José Eduardo Agualusa) 63. From the Mouth of the Whale (Sjón) 64. The Rabbit Back Literature Society (Pasi Ilmari Jaaskelainen) 65. VALIS (Philip K. Dick) 66. High-Rise (JG Ballard) 67. The Heart Goes Last (Margaret Atwood) 68. The Hungry Ghosts (Shyam Selvadurai) 69. The Dream of the Celt (Mario Vargas Llosa) 70. Ficciones (Jorge Luis Borges) A General Theory of Oblivion was brilliant. I had a slow Saturday afternoon with the missus asleep and read it in one sitting. A very beautiful book about the changes in Angola through independence from Portugal and the civil war, as seen by a character hiding in an apartment she's walled off from the rest of the world. It reads like a group of connected short stories, and the main character Ludo's poetry. From the Mouth of the Whale is by an Icelandic novelist. It's the story of Jonas the Learned, a philosopher in 16th-century Iceland who is exiled from his country but not actually allowed to leave it. It's very odd and interesting - I'm not sure it 100% clicked for me, but it was definitely an experience. The Rabbit Back Literature Society is about a group of writers in a rural town in Finland. The leader of the group disappears and the newly-inducted 10th member tries to puzzle out the nature of the group and a mysterious secret they seem to be hiding. I'm not doing it justice, but it was very good and rode an interesting magical-realism line. VALIS was loving bizarre. I don't think I've read enough Dick, or indeed conspiracy theory religious stuff, to really get it. My wife assures me this isn't representative and I just picked badly. High-Rise was excellent. Ballard is a master when it comes to writing social disintegration. The Heart Goes Last was another social-collapse dystopia which makes quite a few with High-Rise, Blindness and (sort of) A General Theory as well. Atwood is playing at home with this one. I feel like it's not saying anything Oryx & Crake didn't say better, but it's still good. The Hungry Ghosts was fine I guess. It's the story of a Sri Lankan boy whose grandmother dominates his early life as she grooms him to take over her slum landlord empire, his eventual emigration and discovery of his sexuality, and the disintegration of Sri Lanka into civil war. There was lots of good stuff in here, but I couldn't help but feel like it was a bit workmanlike in places. Also I wanted to punch Shivan in his loving idiot face. The Dream of the Celt was cool, I didn't know anything about Roger Casement but he's a fascinating figure in anti-imperialism and Irish nationalism and Vargas Llosa nails the whole "fictionalised biography" thing. Finally Ficciones. I feel like Borges was way more educated and intelligent than me and I only barely understand what he's doing here. It was cool though and I'd like to read it again. Must read my wildcard at some point! Only comes out in paperback on the 15th of November so hopefully soon. Year to Date - 70: Booklord: 1-13, 15-22 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) 30. The Mark and the Void (Paul Murray) 31. The Iliad (Homer) 32. Girls of Riyadh (Rajaa Alsanea) 20 33. The Temple of the Golden Pavilion (Yukio Mishima) 34. Steampunk! (Kelly Link & Gavin J. Grant) 13 35. A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man (James Joyce) 36. The Chimes (Anna Smaill) 9 37. The Art of Joy (Goliarda Sapienza) 38. Fever Pitch (Nick Hornby) 39. Fateless (Imre Kertesz) 40. Britannia: A History of Roman Britain (Sheppard Frere) 41. Colourless Tsukuru Tazaki and His Years of Pilgrimage (Haruki Murakami) 22 42. Candide, or Optimism (Voltaire) 43. Dubliners (James Joyce) 21 44. The Fall of the Stone City (Ismail Kadare) 45. Hitler and Stalin: Parallel Lives (Alan Bullock) 46. The Sympathizer (Viet Thanh Nguyen) 47. Guards! Guards! (Terry Pratchett) 48. The Gum Thief (Douglas Coupland) 49. Eric (Terry Pratchett) 50. Beauty is a Wound (Eka Kurniawan) 51. A Wild Sheep Chase (Haruki Murakami) 52. One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich (Aleskandr Solzhenitsyn) 53. Vanished Kingdoms: The History of Half-Forgotten Europe (Norman Davies) 7 54. Being Wrong: Adventures in the Margin of Error (Kathryn Schulz) 55. Sword Song (Bernard Cornwell) 56. Inez (Carlos Fuentes) 57. Two Years, Eight Months, and Twenty Eight Nights (Salman Rushdie) 58. The Burning Land (Bernard Cornwell) 59. Death of Kings (Bernard Cornwell) 60. Life After Life (Kate Atkinson) 61. Blindness (Jose Saramago) 62. A General Theory of Oblivion (José Eduardo Agualusa) 63. From the Mouth of the Whale (Sjón) 64. The Rabbit Back Literature Society (Pasi Ilmari Jaaskelainen) 65. VALIS (Philip K. Dick) 66. High-Rise (JG Ballard) 67. The Heart Goes Last (Margaret Atwood) 68. The Hungry Ghosts (Shyam Selvadurai) 69. The Dream of the Celt (Mario Vargas Llosa) 70. Ficciones (Jorge Luis Borges)
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Oct 31, 2016 22:54
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Corrode posted:A General Theory of Oblivion was brilliant. I had a slow Saturday afternoon with the missus asleep and read it in one sitting. A very beautiful book about the changes in Angola through independence from Portugal and the civil war, as seen by a character hiding in an apartment she's walled off from the rest of the world. It reads like a group of connected short stories, and the main character Ludo's poetry. Glad to see another review for this. It's a great read.
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Nov 1, 2016 01:05
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September/October combined, since they're my busiest months at work and so there's not a ton to report: Gillian Flynn - Dark Places (I liked this quite a lot although I guessed the twist early. From looking this book up again just now I saw it was made into a movie, maybe I'll watch it. This happened to be 15/15 of my books by women, and 40/40 of my vanilla number, making both of those challenges complete.) TT Monday - The Set Up Man (A detective book where the detective is also a reliever in the MLB. Goofy but way up my alley so I read it. It was mediocre and silly but I am probably going to read the next one in the series at some point.) Tana French - The Secret Place (Maybe my least favorite of the Dublin Murder Squad books so far, I really didn't care for the supernatural elements and hope they don't become a thing in the series. Disappointing.) Mike Meginnis - Fat Man and Little Boy (This was simultaneously depressing and charming, very surreal and an interesting idea though it never really grabbed me and it took me a long time to get through it.) Thomas Olde Heuvelt - Hex (A pretty spooky story that somebody here in TBB recommended, somewhere. Solid ending. Appropriately, finished it tonight [Halloween!] and read most of it in a mostly empty hotel in the woods with no cell reception). Booklord Challenge progress: 19) Read something from the lost or beat generation I've just started One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest. Once that's done, I'll be finished with my Booklord Challenge, though I still need to read a few more books after that to finish my Goodreads challenge.
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Nov 1, 2016 04:20
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Total: 36/52 Female authors: 13/24 Non-Fiction: 4/12 Arabian Nights: 3/10 I don't know why Moral Disorder exists. It's not bad, it's just not really good either. It's not really anything, as far as I can tell. It's kind of weirdly (but not badly) written, and the characters aren't very interesting or remarkable. I also spent a lot of it focused on trying to figure out who I was actually reading about, because it seems intentionally written to obscure identities for no particular reason. I guess I just don't get it. At all. Now, The End of an Era is badly written but it's interesting despite that. It was actually written by my great-uncle, which is why I read it, and it probably could have been a good read if it had been edited properly, but as it was published after his death I think maybe they didn't want to alter the content? That would explain some of the issues, but it's also full of typos, missing words, repeated words, etc. and the blurb, written by the publisher, looks like something a highschool student would write. The God Engines was very short and didn't really do much with its premise, which was disappointing, because it seemed like there should have been a lot more to it. It reminded me of an episode of something like The Twilight Zone, where you get the weird setting and a bit of a twist at the end but in a single episode there's no room to develop the idea very far. And I hate Kiln People. Hate it. It's not just that it's bad, it's that it starts out really good. The setting seemed neat, I liked the protagonist, the story was getting pretty interesting, and then it all collapsed into a giant pile of utter wank. Starting somewhere after the half-way point, the plot goes completely off the rails. If it had carried on as it started, I might even have given it five stars, but it doesn't. And what it turns into is so far removed from how it began that it destroys any good will I had toward it. I also read The Phantom: Death of a Pirate Queen (pretty unremarkable by Phantom standards) but as it's a 36-page comic I'm not going to count it. See my Goodreads for full reviews.
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Nov 1, 2016 16:21
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July-Oct I've been so busy with school that writing this up has just been something easily put off, also haven't been reading as much as I would have liked but I'm still on track to hit my goal. Three Men in a Boat - Jerome Jerome - A humorous book about three rich dandies taking a pleasure cruise down a river. Very entertaining. A Little Life - Hanya Yanagihara - I read a review of this that described this novel as "misery porn" and while I enjoyed it overall, I can't really argue with that description. Shadow of the Hegemon - Orson Scott Card - The second book in the Ender's shadow series, solid but forgettable. Desert Solitaire - Edward Abbey - An autobiographical account of one man's experience as a park ranger in the desert. I liked this a lot for the writer's views on how we're destroying national parks due to our need for convenience. Also was depressing since the time of writing what he described as almost certainly come to pass in the areas he talks about. Girl Waits with Gun - Amy Stewart - A solid detective novel about a trio of sisters who live by themselves on their farm and become the target of a rich rear end in a top hat. The 42nd Parallel - John Dos Passos - A novel follwing several characters in the U.S. around the 1900's interspersed with biographies of notable people and weird recollections of the author. I found it interesting for the descriptions of life at the time and the idea that the characters didn't really have many redeeming qualities, they were just throroughly average people. The Death of Ivan Ilych - Leo Tolstoy - A frank novel about the effects of Death on the people we leave behind, which sadly isn't as much as we usually think. A Head Full of Ghosts - Paul Tremblay - A novel about a mentally ill girl mistaken for being possessed and her sister's experience. It was alright. Lisey's Story - Stephen King - A novel about a widow who's husband had a supernatural gift and used it to leave her messages after he died. Standard King writing p much. World Wide Wrestling: The RPG - Nathan D Paoletta - WRASSLIN' The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time - Mark Haddon - A novel written from the perspective of an autistic child trying to solve the mystery of who killed his neighbor's dog. A touching, seemingly accurate account. A Scanner Darkly - Philip K Dick - A novel set in the near future where America has lost the war on drugs and addicts are everywhere. A very sad novel, as Dick humanizes the addicts in the story as they slowly lose their minds or lives. Harry Potter and the Cursed Child - JK Rowling - A play set years after the book series and focuses on the children of the main characters. Pretty much take all of the dumb things from the series and throw them together and watch what happens. A fun read. Angels and Demons - Dan Brown - I had read the Da Vinci Code in high school so I figured I'd knock the airplane fiction category out with this book. Entertaining, but dumb. Go Tell it on the Mountain - James Baldwin - A novel that deals with how African Americans were treated in the 30's. Rich with religious imagery, I really liked it as it set up the expectations for characters and then went into their backstories and changed how you saw them. The Troop - Nick Cutter - A novel about an unfortunate Scout troop that are camping on a quarantined island. Don't read this is you can't stand tapeworms. Booklord Challenge 1) 50/60 2) Something written by a woman - Go Set A Watchman 3) Something Written by a nonwhite author - Spelunky 4) Something written in the 1800s - The Brothers Karamazov 5) Something History Related (fictional or non-fiction your choice) - Samurai! 6) A book about or narrated by an animal - The Art of Racing in the Rain 7) A collection of essays. - Look Evelyn, Duck Dynasty Wiper Blades. We Should Get Them.: A Collection of New Essays 8) A work of Science Fiction - Robot Dreams 9) Something written by a musician - Kanye West Owes Me $300... 10) Read a long book, something over 500 pages - The Brothers Karamazov 11) Read something about or set in NYC - Tom Clancy's The Division: New York Collapse 12) Read Airplane fiction (Patterson, ect) - Angels and Demons 13) Read Something YA - Harry Potter and the Cursed Child 14) Wildcard! - Angels in America: A Gay Fantasia on National Themes - Tony Kushner 15) Something recently published (up to a year. The year will be the day you start this challenge) - Empires of Eve: A History of the Great Empires of Eve Online 16) That one book you’ve wanted to read for a while now. - Ender's Shadow 17) The First book in a series - Wool 18) A biography or autobiography - Bossypants 19) Read something from the lost generation (Fitzgerald, Hemmingway, ect.) or from the Beat Generation - The 42nd Parallel 20) Read a banned book - Catch 22 21) A Short Story collection - About Time: 12 Short Stories 22) It’s a Mystery. - Murder on the Orient Express Chekans 3 16 fucked around with this message at 01:05 on Nov 3, 2016 |
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Nov 2, 2016 23:26
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October 50. Borders of Infinity. Louis McMaster Bujold. Three short stories in the space opera universe of the Vorkosigan saga. The first story was good, the second was fun, and the third was pretty good even if some stuff was just plain implausible. 51. Red Country. Joe Abercrombie. A great book kind of slow. Too many useless plot threads with amazing characters in a westernized fantasy setting... a little too much, but still good. 52. Anvil of Stars. Greg Bear. Not as good as the first book in the series, quite slow and claustrophobic. Not many surprises. 53. All the Names. José Saramago. Like a dystopia were almost no one has a name. Saramago gives us his usual prose with a weirdly attractive story that touches the real world and takes it to familiar and strange places. Booklord challenge 1) Vanilla Number 53/60 4) Something written in the 1800s 6) A book about or narrated by an animal 9) Something written by a musician 12) Read Airplane fiction (Patterson, ect) 14) Wildcard! Ragnarok by AS Byatt. 15) Something recently published 19) Read something from the lost generation (Fitzgerald, Hemmingway, ect.) or from the Beat Genneration
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Nov 2, 2016 23:27
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one of the 2017 book lord challenges should be 'read one of the SA books of the month and comment in the thread at least once' then i might actually do that for once
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Nov 3, 2016 00:31
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chernobyl kinsman posted:one of the 2017 book lord challenges should be 'read one of the SA books of the month and comment in the thread at least once' That's a really good idea.
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Nov 3, 2016 01:45
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chernobyl kinsman posted:one of the 2017 book lord challenges should be 'read one of the SA books of the month and comment in the thread at least once' The challenge should be to not read any text at all.
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Nov 3, 2016 04:47
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I don't even know my numbers anymore, so here's my October books. Barbarian Days by William Finnegan The Unfortunates by Sophie McMannus. Also, I'd like to say that per tradition, I'm stepping down as book lord and offering up the spot to anyone who wants it for next year. It's a bit of hard work, so be forewarned, it's gonna be a crazy the first couple of days.Also, make your challenge different from the previous one.
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Nov 3, 2016 05:00
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I'll step up as 2017 book lord. The book of the month thing was something I already had in mind so glad to see other people think it's a good idea.
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Nov 3, 2016 08:12
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Corrode posted:The book of the month thing was something I already had in mind so glad to see other people think it's a good idea. I've been reading every BOTM this year as an individual challenge anyway, it's a good and cool idea. Not all of the BOTMs have been equally huge hits with me but it's made me read several interesting books I would probably never have thought to read otherwise.
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Nov 3, 2016 10:52
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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. 60 Woodcutters by Thomas Bernahrd as translated by David McLintlock. Got this back from the person I lent it to ages ago. Bernard's so good. 1 61 The Scapegoat by Daphne DuMaurier. I only really kept plugging on with this one because I needed to return it. Dream-like plot about being his French doppleganger's replacement just didn't interest me. 62 Eugene Onegin by Alexander Pushkin as translated by James E. Falen. Always a great anxiety about saying you've read poetry in translation. A very sensitive introductory essay though. 63 Selections from the Rev. Francis Kilvert's Diary edited by William Plomer. A surprise! Kilvert is a fluent and very engaging diarist, writing about his life priesting for a remote Welsh village in the last quarter of the 19th Century. I'd really reccomend people to read this one. 64 Short Friday and other stories by Isaac Bashevis Singer, translated by various. He really is a baffling author. Need to read some criticism of him. Rites of Passage by William Golding. Lords of the Flies with adults, on a ship. I dunno, I'm still unsure what makes this guy so great. 65 Riders in the Chariot by Patrick White. High-falutin book which tries to haul the crucifixion, with all mysteries intact, out to Australia. I guess I didn't give it a fair hearing. 66 The Age of Innocence by Edith Wharton. I reread this very quickly. Still got some great images of beauty there. 67 The Riddle of the Sands by Irskine Childers. Well written adventure novel. 68 The Sword of Dawn by Michael Moorcock. A badly written sci-fi one. 69 We by Yevgeny Zamyatin as translated by Bernard Guilbert Guerny. A much better one. 69/60 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, 12, 13, 14, 15, 16, 17, 18, 19, 20, 21, 22 CestMoi posted:The challenge should be to not read any text at all. Oh man wouldn't that rule. Mr. Squishy fucked around with this message at 11:37 on Nov 3, 2016 |
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Nov 3, 2016 11:32
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Bandiet posted:1. The Stranger by Albert Camus 33. The Enormous Room, by E.E. Cummings. Funny prose. 34. Death In Venice, by Thomas Mann. Reread. 35. Monologue Of A Dog, by Wisława Szymborska. Bad poetry. Vanilla Number: 35/75 Bandiet fucked around with this message at 16:37 on Nov 3, 2016 |
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Nov 3, 2016 16:28
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Corrode posted:I'll step up as 2017 book lord. All yours. Good luck and godspeed to you.
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Nov 3, 2016 17:05
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Corrode posted:I'll step up as 2017 book lord. It would be cool if you had some loosely defined categories in the mix. Last year there was a category like "The Color Red" which pushed me to read a book on color theory while other people read the Scarlet Letter or whatever. I liked how open to interpretation some of them were. Just my opinion!
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Nov 4, 2016 02:09
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I haven't updated since April because I suck! May 26. This Book is Full of Spiders: Seriously, Dude, Don't Touch it- David Wong 27.The Ocean at the End of the Lane- Neil Gaiman. Maybe this is an okay book by itself but to me it just felt extremely derivative of Pratchett's Tiffany Aching books but not as good. 28. The Silmarillion- JRR Tolkien. Yearly re-read. 29. I Have No Mouth and I Must Scream- Harlan Ellison 30.Star Wars: Before the Awakening- Greg Rucka 31. Earth Abides- George R. Stewart. This sucked. It's the story of a dude trying to survive after the world's population is decimated by disease but he spends the whole time internally whining about how superior he is to everyone else and how much better he could make the new society he lives in without ever actually doing anything about it. 32. Lagoon- Nnedia Okorafor 33. Mission Control: Inventing the Groundwork of Spaceflight- Michael Peter Johnson. With all the writing skill of your average undergrad, Johnson spends 160 pages on excruciating minutiae. Have you ever wondered whether mission control at JPL had tile or carpeted floors in 1972 (carpet), or, more importantly, what color that flooring was (blue)? If so, then congratulations! You're the most boring person in the world and this is the perfect book for you. June 34. City of Blades- Robert Jackson Bennett. Owns. Great, incredibly original fantasy about a world trying to adjust after a war that left the literal gods dead. Also isn't set in generic medieval Europe and full of white people, which I love. 35. The Sun Also Rises- Ernest Hemingway 36. Elantris- Brandon Sanderson. I enjoy Sanderson's work, but dang if all his stuff doesn't have the exact same characters: politically savvy lady and dude with magic who leads a band of plucky outcasts. July 37. Alan Turing: The Enigma- Andrew Hodges. 38. Stiletto- Daniel O'Malley. Seriously my favorite urban fantasy ever. 39. Impact- Douglas Preston. Read this for the airport fiction category and man did it suck. I am not joking when I say that multiple female characters were introduced by a physical description of their breasts. 40. The Price of Valor- Django Wexler. I love this series. If you want some Napoleonic-era fantasy with LGBT characters this is your jam, trust me. 41. Blood Oath- Christopher Farnsworth. This is about a vampire who serves as magical secret service to the President. Sounds good, but the book takes itself way too seriously for it to actually be enjoyable in any way. August 42. Promise of Blood- Brian McClellan 43. The Crimson Campaign- Brian McClellan 44. Island- Aldous Juxley 45. The Guns of Empire- Django Wexler 46. The Song of Achilles- Madeline Miller September 47. Welcome to Night Vale- Joseph Fink 48. The Monuments Men- Robert Edsel 49. Death in Venice- Thomas Mann 50. Shadow Divers- Robert Kurson 51. A Conspiracy of Decency- Emmy E. Werner. 52. Between Silk and Cyanide: A Codemaker's War 1941-1945- Leo Marks. A firsthand account of the codemaking and -breaking activities of the SOE during WWII. I'm not sure how much of it I actually believe, but it was very entertaining regardless. 53. Hitler's Scientists: Science, War, and the Devil's Pact- John Cornwell. All Those Dudes You Learned About in High School Science Class Were Nazis: the book 54. The Fall of France: The Nazi Invasion of 1940- Julian T. Jackson 55. Operation Mincemeat: How a Dead Man and a Bizarre Plan Fooled the Nazis and Assured an Allied Victory- Ben Macintyre. "Assured an allied victory" is probably overstating, but this is a great read if you want to learn more about some of the truly kooky poo poo that went down in WWII. 56. The Ghost Army of World War II: How One Top-Secret Unit Deceived the Enemy with Inflatable Tanks, Sound Effects, and Other Audacious Fakery- Rick Beyer. October 57. Robert Oppenheimer: A Life Inside the Center- Ray Monk. Turns out Oppenheimer was a huge shithead. Who knew? 58. The Autumn Republic- Brian McClellan 59. Hidden Figures: The American Dream and the Untold Story of the Black Women Mathematicians Who Helped Win the Space Race- Margot Lee Shetterly. I wanted to like this. There's a movie coming out and the story itself is awesome and deserves to be know, but the book is just very...shallow? It's light on details and mostly focuses on the social conditions of the time period, which, don't get me wrong, are important to the story, but in this case sort of overshadows the time spent on describing the actual NASA work. It's okay, but I came away in the end not really having learned anything beyond "there were black women mathematicians who did calculations for NASA". My goodreads count and my count here are off by 1 and I can't figure out why ugh  Anyway I've finished my vanilla number goal and am just working on the Booklord Challenge goals, so I'm gonna need someone to give me a wildcard please.
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Nov 5, 2016 01:36
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The Berzerker posted:It would be cool if you had some loosely defined categories in the mix. Last year there was a category like "The Color Red" which pushed me to read a book on color theory while other people read the Scarlet Letter or whatever. I liked how open to interpretation some of them were. Just my opinion! Yeah that category lead me to read An Autobiography of Red by Anne Carson which was rad as hell, Anne Carson in general is excellent, I was actually going to ask for recommendations of long form narrative poetry because I have the itch for it. I decided not to do the specific booklord challenge although I probably hit a bunch of the categories; I need to do a more thorough update soon
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Nov 5, 2016 05:11
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Radio! posted:My goodreads count and my count here are off by 1 and I can't figure out why ugh Did you miss putting a date (or at least a year) on one of your books? I've done that before.
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Nov 6, 2016 05:08
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Prolonged Shame posted:1) The All-Girl Filling Station's Last Reunion - Fannie Flagg Oops, I forgot to update my October. Here goes: 87) Isaac's Storm: A Man, a Time, and the Deadliest Hurricane in History - Eric Larson: This was pretty good. It's about the Galveston hurricane of 1900 and all the reasons why it was so deadly and destructive. 88) An Embarrassment of Mangoes - Anne Vanderhoof: A travelogue of a Canadian couple who quit their jobs and spent two years sailing around the Caribbean. Very enjoyable, and with lots of interesting recipes. 89) The Girl in the Spider's Web - David Lagercrantz: I'm not sure if it is because it was by a different author or because I have just grown out of the series, but I thought this was awful. I enjoyed the first three a few years ago so I don't know what happened. 90) Winter's Bone - Daniel Woodrell: Extremely well written. 91) Escape - Carolyn Jessop: The true story of a women who escaped from her FLDS polygamist husband/community. It provides a really chilling look at how deeply messed up the community is, especially after the rise of Warren Jeffs. 92) The Forever War - Joe Haldeman: A little dated but I can see why people call this a sci-fi classic. 93) Wolf in White Van - John Darnielle: I liked this a lot at the beginning but less and less as it went on. It really telegraphed the surprises of the book. 94) Kitchen Confidential: Adventures in the Culinary Underbelly - Anthony Bourdain: I will never be ordering seafood for brunch again, that's for sure. Overall: Total: 94/100 A-Z Challenge: 26/26 Booklord Challenge: 22/22 Presidential Biographies: 6/6 Done with all my subchallenges!
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Nov 10, 2016 19:24
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Corrode posted:The Atrocity Exhibition, JG Ballard. Well now. That was something.
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Nov 10, 2016 21:09
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Booklord Challenge Update posted:Count: 92/96 books, 9 nonfiction (10%), 4 rereads (4%) 86. Daughter of the Empire by Janny Wurts & Raymond E. Feist 87. Servant of the Empire by Janny Wurts & Raymond E. Feist 88. Mistress of the Empire by Janny Wurts & Raymond E. Feist I really liked the first two books; they consists almost entirely of Mara creating intricate schemes to turn a badly losing situation into a survivable stalemate and, ultimately, victory. And I am a great fan of intricate schemes and plotting leading to come-from-behind victories. My biggest complaint is that Servant is twice as long as Daughter, and feels like it has two major plot arcs each with their own climax (the Night of Swords halfway through the book, and then the actual ending); furthermore, it wraps up the main plot started in Daughter quite nicely. Because of this, I think it might actually have made more sense for Servant to have been published as two books, neatly rounding out a trilogy, and then Mistress as a one or two book coda, similar to how Zahn's Thrawn and Hand of Thrawn books were published. The third book takes place some years later and deals with all the fallout from Mara's plots in the first two books coming back to haunt her. I thought it started out pretty weak, but it gets better, and finishes extremely strong. That said, I still think it's the weakest of the trilogy, in large part because it spends a lot of time (especially in the first half) focusing on characters who aren't Mara, and activities that aren't Mara's plotting (which she doesn't do nearly as much of, either, focusing more on high-level strategic decisions). Since that was the main draw of the first two books for me, the third can't help but be a letdown, no matter how cool the Cho-Ja mages are. 89. The Final Reflection by John M. Ford The other JMF Star Trek novel. I think this was a better read than How Much For Just The Planet, especially for someone (like myself) who is largely disinterested in Star Trek and has only seen a handful of episodes -- I've actually read a lot more than I've seen, thanks to getting into my mom's collection of James Blish Trek adaptations growing up. A nice mix of Klingon culture, space battles, and political machinations. One thing that I didn't expect is how surprising I would find transporters. I know they're a Trek staple, but it's been so long since I've read anything at all in a setting with ubiquitous teleportation that I kept being startled every time they used a transporter rather than docking or using a shuttle. Teleportation that isn't of the "infrastructural FTL" sort seems to have fallen out of favour in SF. 90. Brokedown Palace by Steven Brust This is, I think, the only Dragaera book from an Eastern perspective; yes, Vlad is an Easterner by birth, but he's also completely immersed in Imperial culture. It has a very different perspective and a much more ethereal, faery-tale quality to it. It also contains, as the prologue, a telling of the Legend of Fenar, the story of how Fenar traveled alone into Faerie, with a fey-sword and a taltos-horse, to confront Kav, Lord of Faerie on his throne; and how he lost both the horse and the sword, but gained a promise of peace from Faerie that endures to this day. Fans of Paarfi may recognize this as chapter 30 of The Phoenix Guards as filtered through a thousand years of retellings, which of course meant I had to reread that, too, and as ever it's funnier than I remembered. Apparently we're getting a new Paarfi book sometime next year. I'm stoked. 91. The Rescuers by Margery Sharp I was going through a box of books from my childhood and populating my son's shelves with them -- he's not reading on his own yet, but he'll drat well have lots of books to choose from once he is -- when I came across this old favourite and had to stop and reread it. It's bite-sized these days but just as delightful as ever, although I have a new appreciation now for the engineering marvel that is Miss Bianca's mouse-scale, atomic-powered speedboat.  It's interesting to see the contrast in personalities between the Miss Bianca of the books and the Miss Bianca of the movies (which my son was briefly but intensely obsessed with earlier this year); she is by no means a delicate flower (once she gets into the swing of things, anyways), but neither is she the enthusiastic adrenaline junky of the movies. But the movies have very little in common with the books anyways. 92. Rise: The Complete Newflesh Collection by Seanan McGuire (as Mira Grant) This was ok -- I enjoyed it -- but I didn't love it. I liked the main Newsflesh books, and basically everything InCryptid, a great deal more. Part of this is a number of small but nagging inconsistencies with the main books; part of it is that it's mostly novellas, a format I'm not overly fond of; and partly I think it finishes with the weakest story in the collection, "Coming To You Live". Georgia & Shaun earned their retirement, dammit, and if McGuire is going to drag them out of it I want to see a slice of life in post-zombie Canada, not a retread of territory and characters already well covered in the novels. After this I think I would actually rank InCryptid over Newsflesh overall. I'm just about to wrap up Wave Without a Shore, and in the background I've been slowly going through Wild Swans -- I'm about halfway done that now. Considering recent events I think I need something relatively light and feelgood to read next, though, so the rest of November is probably going to be a mix of favoured books from my childhood and space opera recommendations from my friends.
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Nov 11, 2016 17:10
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Ben Nevis posted:Well now. That was something. I like the one about how he wants to gently caress highways.
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Nov 11, 2016 21:40
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Mr. Squishy posted:I like the one about how he wants to gently caress highways. Probably highways with Jackie Kennedy's mouth-parts.
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Nov 11, 2016 22:14
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chernobyl kinsman posted:one of the 2017 book lord challenges should be 'read one of the SA books of the month and comment in the thread at least once' This is a great idea. I've ended up reading a few of the BOTM this year and have really enjoyed both the discussions and the push to read a variety of books.
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Nov 13, 2016 11:49
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Ben Nevis posted:Well now. That was something. Isn't it just? I thought it'd be a bit different. Plus I want to read it myself and can't until I get paid, so I thought someone else might as well.
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Nov 13, 2016 20:05
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November update, because I'm highly unlikely to finish another whole book in the two days that remain of this month: 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. 14. The Name of the Rose by Umberto Eco. 16. Plain Tales from the Hills by Rudyard Kipling. 17. Doktor Proktors Prompepulver by Jo Nesbø. 18. Acceptance by Jeff VanderMeer. 19. The Temple of the Golden Pavilion by Yukio Mishima. 20. Før jeg brenner ned by Gaute Heivoll. 21. Billionaire Boy by David Walliams. 22. Children of Time by Adrian Tchaikovsky. 23. The Quiet Game by Greg Iles. 24. The Vegetarian by Han Kang. 25. Maurtuemordene by Hans Olav Lahlum. 26. Luna: New Moon by Ian McDonald. 27. Destroyermen: Blood in the Water by Taylor Anderson. 28. Gangsta Granny by David Walliams. 29. The Nightmare Stacks by Charles Stross. 30. The Long Way to a Small Angry Planet by Becky Chambers. 31. Lud-in-the-Mist by Hope Mirrlees. 32. Ratburger by David Walliams. 33. Sønnen ("The Son") by Jon Nesbø. 34. Svein og rotta i syden by Marit Nicolaysen. 35. Døden ved vann ("Death by water") by Torkil Damhaug. 36. Ildmannen ("The Man of Fire" would be a good translation) by Torkil Damhaug. 37. Pale Fire by Vladimir Nabokov. 38. Stoner by John Williams. 39. Siddhartha by Hermann Hesse. 40. Thornghost by Tone Almhjell. 41. The Boy in the Dress by David Walliams. 42. Right Ho, Jeeves by P.G. Wodehouse. 43. Bad Feminist by Roxane Gay. New: 44. Kitchen Confidential by Anthony Bourdain. BOTM for November and a light, fun, good read it was. The author's stories from his life as a cook and chef in the dark underbelly of the American restaurant world. Plus some decent tips for those of us who like loving around in the kitchen. 45. Jerusalem by Alan Moore. Finally finished this motherfucker after two and a half months. It was long, mostly quite interesting and imaginative, long, complicated, Alan Moore at his best and worst, and it was long. Enjoyed most of it. It's mostly set within a few blocks of Northampton, at times ranging from the early middle ages to the heat death of the universe. It features the afterlife where time becomes a fourth spatial dimension, angles and devils, time-travelling ghosts, and a huge and varied cast. Everything links together. The one chapter written as a pastiche of Finnegans Wake (and starring James Joyce's mentally ill daughter Lucia) was a bit of a chore. The one chapter written as a Samuel Beckett play (and starring the ghosts of Samuel Beckett himself and Thomas Becket, among others) was hilarious and tragic. And so on. 46. Se meg, Medusa ("See Me, Medusa") by Torkil Damhaug. One of the first crime thrillers by this Norwegian author whom I discovered earlier this year. Shorter and less complicated than the others I've read, still, pretty intriguing. Main character is a successful doctor in his mid-40s, living the perfect family life... then, seemingly random people connected to him in different ways begin showing up dead, apparently mauled by a bear (where no bears should be)... 47. Sangen om den røde rubin ("The Song of the Red Ruby") by Agnar Mykle. 1957 Norwegian novel, a bildungsroman chronicling the misadventures of a young man nearly 20 years earlier (it's set in 1938-1939 with a brief coda set during and immediately after the war) as he goes through life in search of love but mostly ending up finding a lot of pussy. This book was a major scandal in our then rather puritanical society , and was not only banned and confiscated but criminal charges for pornography were brought against author and publisher; it took a year of high-profile court proceedings going all the way to the supreme court before the ban was rescinded and the charges dropped. By modern standards the racy bits aren't all that shocking (but one can see how they must have been thought so, 59 years ago -- lots of detailed descriptions of intimate bits of anatomy, frank discussion of various sexual practices, etc.) but what surprised me was both how beautiful the actual prose was, and how goddamn funny the book often turned out to be. Must be one of the most enjoyable books I've read all year. Still have some left of The Big Book of Science Fiction, may well finish during December (all along I've been reading a few short stories here and there between other books). Booklord challenge: 1) Vanilla Number - 47/40 2) Something written by a woman- I Don't, Gentleman Jole and the Red Queen, The Vegetarian, The Long Way to a Small Angry Planet, Lud-in-the-Mist, Svein og rotta i syden, Thornghost, Bad Feminist 3) Something Written by a nonwhite author - Temple of the Golden Pavilion, The Vegetarian, Bad Feminist 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 - Thornghost 7) A collection of essays. - Bad Feminist 8) A work of Science Fiction - much of The Apocalypse Triptych, Gentleman Jole and the Red Queen, Red Rising, Half a War, Acceptance, Children of Time, Luna: New Moon, others 9) Something written by a musician - White Line Fever 10) Read a long book, something over 500 pages - The Name of the Rose, The Quiet Game, goddamn Jerusalem 11) Read something about or set in NYC - Kitchen Confidential 12) Read Airplane fiction (Patterson, ect) - Sønnen definitely qualifies for this 13) Read Something YA - Half the World, Red Rising, Half a War, Thornghost 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, Children of Time, Luna: New Moon 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, The Quiet Game, Luna: New Moon 18) A biography or autobiography - White Line Fever, Før jeg brenner ned, arguably Kitchen Confidential 19) Read something from the lost generation (Fitzgerald, Hemmingway, ect.) or from the Beat Generation - Sweet Thursday 20) Read a banned book - Sangen om den røde rubin 21) A Short Story collection - all volumes of The Apocalypse Triptych 22) It’s a Mystery.- The Name of the Rose, The Quiet Game, Maurtuemordene, Sønnen, Døden ved vann, Ildmannen, Se meg, Medusa Additional individual challenge: Norwegians: 10/10 Non-fiction: 5/5 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.) 11 for 11 on this. One month left, all goals met or exceeded (except for December's BOTM whatever that turns out to be). Ding, level up! Edit: And yes, in the blurb for Jerusalem it *should be* "angles and devils". Not "angels". Really.
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Nov 28, 2016 22:54
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November books 74 . His Bloody Project by Graeme Macrae Burnet This was a really interesting book and a good read. It has several sections in what is a fictional case study of a triple murder in 1860. It is set in the modern times so it is pieced together by the murderer's memoir, a doctor's notes, and the trial pieced together by news accounts and documents. I loved the first section, the memoir, it was well-written and by itself an interesting story. There is no question about guilt from the start of the book, and no question about the details of the crime for the most part, so it isn't exactly an unfolding mystery which I think is kind of refreshing since that is the kind of book I expected. I liked it a lot better than the winner of the Man Booker, Sellout. 75 . Hausfrau by Jill Alexander Essbaum I am not exactly sure why I decided to read this book other than it was on my list and was available. It is written well, but really far outside my normal reading. It is about a middle aged woman and her struggle to fit in to a new country with her husband. She is from the US and they moved to Zürich where she doesn't know the language and finds she isn't in love with her husband. She is seeing a psychiatrist which is peppered throughout the book, and has several affairs. Anyway, not terrible though it was really difficult to relate to her. 76 . Woman in the Dunes by Kobo Abe I guess you would call this a parable about life and our dead end jobs, directionless lives and eventual acceptance. It's about a man on vacation in the dunes by the ocean catching bugs, which he collects . He finds it late and decides to spend the night in a nearby village. The villagers approach him and offer him lodging, and help him down a ladder in to a pit in the sand where a woman lives. She spends her time trying to keep up with the sand that constantly threatens to overtake her home. He thinks this is all uncomfortable, sandy, and odd, and is glad to be leaving in the morning. He eventually figures out he has been kidnapped and forced to work with the woman to save her home and the village from the shifting sands. It's a mix of story telling, metaphor, and strangely enough some science about the sand. Anyway, it wasn't long and was a pretty good read, maybe 3 stars if I had to rate it. It is one of those books though that sticks with you and for some reason I remember in great detail. 77 . Cryptonomicon by Neal Stephenson I am basically running out of books that I had setup to read and tried several books this month and could not get in to any of them, but I had this book sitting around for a long time and decided it was time to tackle it. It was long, really too long, there was so much that could have been cut from this book and it would not have suffered for it. That's not to say it was bad, I liked the story and the tying of past and present characters, and the tech was surprisingly real and not cringe worthy. It's really my first Stephenson book as I started Snow Crash many years ago, but it just didn't interest me in the least. Anyway, good book, took me a long time to read. This was my shortest month of reading but mainly because of Cryptonomicon, the holidays and vacation. I am done with the Booklord challenge as of last moth and have read 77/50 books. Looking to complete 80 this year.
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Nov 29, 2016 03:46
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October 91. Silver on the Tree - Susan Cooper 92. Girl in Landscape - Jonathan Lethem 93. The Trespasser (Dublin Murder Squad #6) - Tana French 94. Fool’s Errand (Tawny Man #1) - Robin Hobb 95. The Heart is a Lonely Hunter - Carson McCullers 96. Ghost Story (Dresden Files #13) - Jim Butcher 97. Nada the Lily - H. Rider Haggard 98. Golden Fool (Tawny Man #2) - Robin Hobb November 99. Fool’s Fate (Tawny Man #3) - Robin Hobb 100. Manhattan Transfer - John Dos Passos 101. Mindset: the Psychology of Success - Carol Zweck 102. Catch-22 - Joseph Heller 103. Oscar & Lucinda - Peter Carey 104. Swing Time - Zadie Smith 105. Moonglow - Michael Chabon 106. Parable of the Sower - Octavia Butler Parenthood has still given me a decent amount of time to read, but not a whole lot of time to write about what I read, so here's some catching up. I finished my booklord challenge with Manhattan Transfer as my Lost Generation book and Nada the Lily as my wildcard. I really, really liked Nada the Lily - not what I was expecting at all. Here I thought it was some western when it was actually the story of warring tribes in Africa. Other standouts: the Tawny Man trilogy by Robin Hobb was excellent, Catch-22 and Heart is a Lonely Hunter were favorites reread, Swing Time, Moonglow and The Trespasser were new releases from the library that were all pretty good. Probably the best book of all of 'em was the one I finished last night, Parable of the Sower, which followed a young woman as society crumbles around her. (It's already well in the process of doing so as the book starts.) As far as post-apocalyptic fiction goes, this was among some of the best I've read (and that's a pretty crowded genre at the moment) 1) Vanilla Number (106/52) 2) Something written by a woman: Butler, Smith, Zweck, Hobb, McCullers, Cooper, French 3) Something Written by a nonwhite author: Butler, Smith 4) 5) 6) 7) 8) A work of Science Fiction: Parable of the Sower, Girl in Landscape 9) 10) Read a long book, something over 500 pages: all 3 Robin Hobb books 11) Read something about or set in NYC: Manhattan Transfer 12) 13) Read Something YA: Silver on the Tree 14) Wildcard! - Nada the Lily 15) Something recently published: Swing Time, Moonglow, The Trespasser 16) 17) The First book in a series: Fool's Errand 18) 19) Read something from the lost generation (Fitzgerald, Hemmingway, ect.) or from the Beat Generation: Manhattan Transfer 20) 21) A Short Story collection: Interpreter of Maladies 22) It’s a Mystery: The Trespasser
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Nov 30, 2016 15:39
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