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I read 54 last year, so I'll set my goal at 52 again this year. One a week seems reasonable. I'm also going to add some extra conditions this year though. Firstly, at least 20 of the 52 must be by female authors since it was only 17/54 last year. At least ten of them must be non-fiction since I only read five of those in 2013. And finally, no more than five books from any one series can count, because otherwise I'm likely to read too many Poirot books. I will be counting books that I've already started reading though, as long as I finish them this year. Here's my Goodreads for anyone who's interested in seeing my reviews or whatever.
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Jan 2, 2014 04:35
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showbiz_liz posted:I wonder- for the people who did this last year, could you say what your favorite book of 2013 was? Loath Letters by Christy Leigh Stewart. If you're looking for the Kindle version it's listed as Loath Letter for some reason. I also really enjoyed The Count of Monte Cristo by Alexandre Dumas and The Poison Eaters and Other Stories by Holly Black.
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Jan 14, 2014 03:39
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Hocus Pocus posted:6. Kafka On The Shore by Haruki Murakami Almost exactly how I felt about that book.
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Jan 17, 2014 12:22
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Carbon Thief posted:That's not really a great one. I'd try reading one of her classics that stars Poirot, like 'The Murder of Roger Ackroyd', 'Death on the Nile', or 'Murder on the Orient Express' and see what you think. 'And Then There Were None' is also considered one of her best, and I loved 'Crooked House'. But if you don't get hooked in on one of those I mentioned, I'd give up, because they're all kind of a similar style after a while. I read them all as a teenager, but probably wouldn't re-read very many of them now. Dead Man's Folly, Dumb Witness and Cards on the Table are also good. Avoid The ABC Murders, The Big Four and Black Coffee.
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Jan 20, 2014 03:37
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attackbunny posted:2) Twelve Years a Slave - Solomon Northup, David Wilson. Goodreads review here. It's all in the subtitle, really: Narrative of Solomon Northup, citizen of New-York, kidnapped in Washington city in 1841, and rescued in 1853, from a cotton plantation near the Red River in Louisiana. Reminds me of my favourite book title: The Life and Strange Surprizing Adventures of Robinson Crusoe, Of York, Mariner: Who lived Eight and Twenty Years, all alone in an un-inhabited Island on the Coast of America, near the Mouth of the Great River of Oroonoque; Having been cast on Shore by Shipwreck, wherein all the Men perished but himself. With An Account how he was at last as strangely deliver'd by Pyrates by Daniel Defoe. Travels into Several Remote Nations of the World. In Four Parts. By Lemuel Gulliver, First a Surgeon, and then a Captain of Several Ships by Jonathan Swift is also pretty good.
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Jan 22, 2014 12:01
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8one6 posted:10) A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur's Court by Mark Twain I read this a while ago and hated it. Right off the bat, this guy who was suddenly and unexpectedly thrown back in time knew what day a solar eclipse was going to happen. He also knows how to construct power plants, telephones, explosives, guns etc. with only the resources of a medieval kingdom to help him. All that would have been irritating, but what really pushes it over the edge is the protagonist's apparent belief that 19th century America is the apex of all civilisation. Knights are made to be nicer and less destructive by learning to play baseball. People are cured of superstition by learning to talk like Americans, etc. It's incredibly obnoxious.
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Jan 28, 2014 14:40
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January
Female authors: 3/20 Non-fiction: 2/10 Goodreads. Body Bags was mostly just tedious and dumb. It takes way too long for anything interesting to happen, and when it does the plot is stupid. First Drop was much better, although I really hate how it seems that almost every tough female protagonist has to be a rape victim. It's just such a predictable and overused trope. Seriously... I'm Kidding was funny but without any real substance. Easy to read and just as easy to forget. Bartender is probably the stand-out for this month, which is unfortunate because it's not very good. It's pretty funny, but it could really stand some pretty severe editing, and it shows how much Dan O'Brien's writing has improved over time. Very reminiscent of his early columns on Cracked. Communication Skills Toolkit is one of the worst books I've read in a while. I only did read it because it was assigned as a required textbook for one of my classes, and that appears to be because the authors are in a position to influence what books are required. Pompous, condescending and badly written, and containing practically no worthwhile information. I'd suggest skipping this even if you are told you have to read it.
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Jan 30, 2014 07:47
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Stravinsky posted:I just want people to read a book. Not a sports page. Not a magazine. But a book. A loving book. A) Why do you even care? What are you getting out of that? B) Who are you to say what makes someone a "better reader"? Why is some generic fantasy novel more valid than a graphic novel or RPG sourcebook?
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Feb 9, 2014 04:19
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Hieronymous Alloy posted:Prince Valiant used to be good? Who knew?!?! Prince Valiant is still good.
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Feb 9, 2014 11:08
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8one6 posted:19) Catch-22 by Joseph Heller Yeah, I didn't get Catch-22 at all. I didn't find any of it funny, and I don't really understand what the point of it was. Oh, and I felt like it was supposed to be as surprising to the reader as it was to Yossarian that Orr hadn't died, but it was really, really obvious. And the stuff about Milo's syndicate made no sense to me. I felt like maybe it was supposed to be a parody of futures trading, but if so it seemed to be a poor one.
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Feb 10, 2014 09:56
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Stravinsky posted:Do not do this. Don't do what?  Locker Room Zubaz posted:Catch-22 and Slaughterhouse-Five are two of my favorite books because they don't just tell you "Hey you should hate war its hell" they show you what being in incredibly hosed up positions does to people who were somewhat normal. No one in Catch-22 could be described as even somewhat normal, except possibly Yossarian. They're all completely absurd right from the beginning.
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Feb 11, 2014 04:39
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Stravinsky posted:I guess what I am saying is that if you are looking for a straight man in Catch-22, its going to be the chaplin but he is pretty absurd in his own ways as well. I wasn't though. I was responding to Locker Room Zubaz saying that "they show you what being in incredibly hosed up positions does to people who were somewhat normal", and at no point in the book were any of the characters normal. I'd still like to know what you were referring to when you said "Do not do this".
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Feb 11, 2014 09:27
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Mad Wack posted:I hate goodreads. Why is that? Stravinsky posted:I meant don't do this to me. I was not being really serious so its nothing to be overly concerned about to be honest. I wasn't concerned. I am curious though as to why you take other people's choice of reading material or enjoyment of certain books so personally. Why does it affect you to know that someone only reads comics or doesn't like Catch-22?
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Feb 12, 2014 03:14
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8one6 posted:25) The Count of Monte Cristo by Alexandre Dumas Someone warned me before I started reading it that the beginning was slow but to persevere and get through it because it gets really good later on, and maybe it was because I was expecting that, but I actually didn't have a problem with the early part of the book at all, I enjoyed it the whole way through.
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Feb 25, 2014 02:47
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January
Total: 7/52 Female authors: 3/20 Non-fiction: 2/10 Goodreads. I could blame having essays to write this month, but honestly I was just really lazy. Hardly accomplished anything all month. Nevermore had sort of a fairy-tale feel to it and some interesting ideas, but I never really felt invested in the story or cared about the characters. The biggest criticism I have though is that making it about Edgar Allan Poe seemed totally unnecessary; I really can't think how the story would change at all if the protagonist was someone else. You wouldn't get the link to The Raven, but that was tenuous at best anyway. I liked the first half of Hollow World but felt it fell down a bit after that. Firstly, there didn't seem to be enough time spent on describing Hollow World and it seemed like the portagonist really should have had a lot more questions, and even when he was being shown around and given tours, we the audience never really saw any of it. But the main problem was with the primary antagonist. I found the reveal really disappointing and it just didn't really get any better from there. Then there were a few little things (psychic humans and sentient trees amongst other things) that could have been overlooked if the core was good because they never have any real impact on the plot, but that was kind of part of the problem. Things were just thrown out there for no apparent reason.
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Feb 28, 2014 10:01
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Total: 7/52 Female authors: 3/20 Non-fiction: 2/10 Goodreads. Sad Cypress is one of the better Poirot mysteries, despite Poirot himself not standing out as much as usual. The clues all come together very nicely and you can start putting things together yourself as you go. Not much to say about The Lady in the Lake. It's a Philip Marlowe novel so it's good, but it doesn't stand out amongst the rest. Solid mystery, great atmosphere. Notes from the Internet Apocalypse really didn't do anything for me at all. I read and enjoyed the serialised version on Cracked, and I don't know whether my tastes have changed or if the novel isn't as good or if it just doesn't hold up to re-reading, but after reading this book I can't even remember what I liked about the original version. Normally I don't like either Young Adult books or supernatural romance, but even though Tithe apparently fits into both categories it doesn't have the feel to it that normally makes me hate them. Plus it's about fairies, and fairies are great. I enjoyed this a lot. Mogworld wasn't laugh-out-loud funny, but was amusing. It doesn't really live up to the potential of the premise but was still an enjoyable read.
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Mar 31, 2014 04:41
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beer_war posted:Song of Susannah (Dark Tower #6) by Stephen King: Basically setup for the finale, easily the worst book in the Dark Tower series. Although only The Gunslinger really stood out to me as being particularly good, Wizard and Glass was the worst by far. Nothing of importance happens and it just drags on and on. If he'd left that one out completely and cut Wolves of the Calla and The Dark Tower each down to about half as long then the series would have been much better.
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Mar 31, 2014 08:38
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Stravinsky posted:You could keep it the same amount and post about graphic novels in one of the two subforums for them you know. You could stop going on and on about this and just get the gently caress over it.
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Apr 10, 2014 16:21
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Roydrowsy posted:I am curious, I list it on Goodreads as abandoned and sometimes write a review, but I don't count it toward my total.
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Apr 17, 2014 02:56
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Total: 14/52 Female authors: 5/20 Non-fiction: 2/10 Goodreads. I somehow only managed to read two books this month and neither of them was particularly good. Angry Ghosts takes a while to get going, but once it does it's quite enjoyable. I can't say that it had any great impact on me, but it was decent and I'll probably read the sequel eventually. Solid setting, interesting characters. My major criticism would be that the antagonists are barely even in the book (although they may play a larger role in the next one). Their absence wasn't really a problem, the story certainly works fine without them, I just thought they were interesting and would have liked to hear a bit more about them, rather than having them almost entirely as an unseen and unknown threat. Brave Men Run was a bit too YA for my tastes, but not the worst thing I've ever read. The setting is basically just an X-Men ripoff where mutants are just beginning to show up, but less about super heroes and more just about a small group of teenagers. Also it pretty much feels like half a book. Not a lot happens through most of this book and the primary antagonist basically just kind of disappears at the end, so I was really hoping that the second book would bring it together a bit better. Unfortunately the second book was worse than the first one and I stopped reading a short way in. I am almost finished reading Zombies vs. Unicorns though, which is a collection of short stories, half about zombies and half about unicorns, and I'm enjoying the unicorn ones. But I find zombies pretty tedious and none of the stories I've read so far have changed my mind on that. Tiggum fucked around with this message at 03:27 on May 1, 2014 |
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May 1, 2014 03:25
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Female authors: 8/24 Non-fiction: 4/12 Goodreads. I don't like zombies, but I do like unicorns, so Zombies Vs. Unicorns, a collection of short stories (half about zombies, half about unicorns) was a bit of a mixed bag. Nothing particularly remarkable though. Everyday Sexism was the stand-out book this month and I think everyone should read it. I didn't much care for Frankenstein. Even setting aside the whole creation of the creature, the whole thing seems pretty implausible. Like, if Frankenstein hadn't been immediately horrified by his own creation as soon as he brought it to life and fled then the entire rest of the book would have gone completely differently. Even assuming there's something about the creature that just makes people hate it as soon as they see it, Frankenstein consistently misses opportunities to make the situation better and just sits around doing nothing. And I know forensics is a pretty modern thing, but surely it's not that difficult to tell that someone's been strangled by a giant as opposed to a young woman. I liked the way the characters were written in Carrie, but other than that I didn't really see anything to recommend it. I'm not sure what the point of it even is, and the way it was written didn't make sense. The Shadow Exploded, the book within the book, seems to be a non-fiction account of events from within the world in which they take place, yet it seems to contain these details that couldn't possibly be known by its author. The Happiest Days of Our Lives just made me dislike Wil Wheaton. He's a grown adult with special D&D dice that no one else is allowed to touch. He uses the words "grok" and "frak" in everyday conversation. He really cares about video game achievements. He's one of those people who say "dogs have owners, cats have staff". Every chapter made me dislike him more. And even when he's not being obnoxious, his stories are just so ordinary. I don't understand why anyone would want to read this stuff. It's not noteworthy or interesting. It's like reading the diary of an ordinary, middle-class father. How to Archer was good though. If you like the show you'll probably enjoy it. Tiggum fucked around with this message at 03:15 on Jun 29, 2014 |
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May 28, 2014 03:59
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ulvir posted:Did I just misunderstand you here, or is your reading challenge gonna mainly consist of you listening to a few audiobooks instead of actually reading the books?
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Jun 1, 2014 06:41
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ulvir posted:I thought the whole point of a reading challenge was to, you know, challenge yourself. There's nothing wrong with audiobooks in itself, but it seems odd in this context since it's hardly any challenging. And aside from that, a book is a container for words. An audiobook is an alternative container for those same words. What difference does it make if you read it as text or listen to it as audio?
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Jun 2, 2014 04:38
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Xik posted:Well, this is the reading challenge thread. Listening to audio isn't reading, they are completely different mediums. If the Game of Thrones TV show was 100% faithful to the books, would that count?
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Jun 2, 2014 10:02
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Xik posted:Can you explain? Is it completely different to the other novels in the series? If it's going to ruin Culture for me maybe I'll skip that one It's my favourite. I don't think it's particularly different than the others, but it does have a lot more focus on the Minds than some of the other books.
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Jun 3, 2014 13:41
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Female authors: 8/24 Non-fiction: 6/12 Goodreads. I fell behind again this month so I'll have to read more in July, but I did mostly enjoy what I read. Intercultural Communication was interesting and well-written, but the way it's set out with all the activities and tasks for students is pretty annoying. Throughout my years of education I've seen many books formatted this way and not once has any class I've been a part of used them in the ways the authors apparently intended. Does anyone, ever? Also, being a textbook, it's way more expensive than you'd expect, and if it hadn't been required for one of my classes I'd never have bought it at that price. Despite knowing very little about the Roman republic before reading The Makers of Rome I found it very easy to understand roughly the various positions and terms, and it's all very easy to read and both interesting and entertaining. It's pretty clear that Plutarch didn't let facts get in the way of a good story (especially in the case of Mark Antony) but there are plenty of footnotes throughout the book and an appendix specifically related to the historical facts of the life of Mark Antony. It's left me keen to read more of Plutarch's Lives. One warning though, the Kindle edition of this book is just appallingly edited. It's full of OCR and formatting errors and doesn't appear to have been so much as proofread, so I'd recommend a print version. Also, I don't know why it's called "Makers of Rome", the title doesn't fit at all. Tik-Tok of Oz was a bit of a disappointment. I didn't enjoy it as much as the other Oz books so far. There was nothing really new in it, mostly just the nomes and characters from previous books. Betsy is indistinguishable from Dorothy, to the point that I can't understand why she exists at all. This book could easily have been about Dorothy instead and been almost identical. Also, I don't care for the shaggy man, I find him mildly irritating.
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Jun 29, 2014 03:23
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Hocus Pocus posted:42. The Master and Margarita by Mikhail Bulgakov
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Jul 5, 2014 14:58
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Hocus Pocus posted:Did you feel differently once Margarita was introduced?
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Jul 6, 2014 05:17
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Stravinsky posted:When you read it did you have anything (prior knowledge or annotations on the book) that gave insight into the things it was satirizing?
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Jul 22, 2014 06:43
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Female authors: 12/24 Non-fiction: 6/12 Goodreads. Illweed is a fairy tale stretched too thin. The story takes too long to go anywhere, and the characters are neither likeable nor interesting. It's all very superficial and lacks any redeeming originality or humour. Basically, it was just boring. Which explains why I forgot about it when writing up my list for last month. Arcanum 101 is Harry Potter for a slightly older audience, YA rather than children. It was mostly fairly inoffensive, but there are some really dumb bits, like people causing their own problems by just not talking to each other like normal human beings, and basically the whole last chapter (and a bit of the one before). Also, the random Spanish words sprinkled throughout were really annoying. I guess they're there to signify that the protagonist is bilingual, but this isn't important to the plot at all. It wasn't terrible, but I really can't see any reason to recommend this book to anyone. The Outsider isn't actually the book I rated highest this month, but it is the one I'd be most likely to recommend. It started very slow (and the first few chapters don't really seem to add anything of value) and I don't understand the point of revealing the murder right at the start, since we then spend the entire rest of the book waiting for it. Aside from that though it was pretty good, and I liked Emma. One, Two, Buckle My Shoe is one of the better Poirot books. The mystery has a nice level of complexity but all comes together at the end, and there are no real red herrings, just things that don't seem to fit at first but end up being all part of the same pattern. This was actually the book I rated highest this month. Destination: Void is somewhat dragged down by the amount of technobabble, though in some ways it works quite effectively as you get the definite impression that the characters are experts speaking to each other in technical jargon (as they would). But it does mean that you end up reading a lot of words that don't really mean anything. I feel like it might have worked better as a short story, with a faster pace, but on the other hand it never got to the point of being boring or tedious and it did seem to keep moving fairly consistently, so perhaps not. The Time of the Dark is very generic fantasy, of the type where someone from Earth travels to the fantasy world and (I'm guessing, because I've only read the first book) plays a central role in saving it. The only deviations from the standard formula here are that there are two protagonists and one of them's a woman. The world of the setting (or at least the country into which the protagonists arrive) is kind of weird, in that there seems to be a bizarre mix of gender-blindness and traditional gender roles, where a female soldier or cleric is considered perfectly normal, but women seem to be expected to raise the children and a particular male character seems to have authority over his adult sister, including telling her who to marry. Also, there are a species called "dooics" which are compared to Neanderthals by the character with knowledge of both worlds, and they're kept as slaves, which the protagonists (both from modern-day America) seem to regard as completely OK. Perhaps they weren't intended by the author to be as intelligent as I imagine them to be, but they're repeatedly referred to as slaves (rather than domesticated animals or something) and that word choice alone suggests at least a near-human level of intelligence. Over all, the book was OK, but it wasn't good enough to make me want to read the rest of the series. I've read this type of book before, I pretty much already know what happens. And at the end of the month I'm still one book behind schedule, and falling short on my sub-goals as well.
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Jul 31, 2014 04:42
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Female authors: 12/24 Non-fiction: 8/12 Goodreads. The Fall of the Roman Republic was not as good as The Makers of Rome, but does have Pompey the Great and Julius Caesar in it, so it's worth reading for those. As with the other, the Kindle version is badly put together and doesn't appear to have been edited to correct OCR errors. The Long Mars was OK. The Long Earth series is starting to lose me a bit. I'm pretty much sick of Joshua and Sally and Lobsang, but I liked the bits of this one that were focused on Maggie and her crew travelling out exploring. I find it disappointing that the aliens (Kobolds, Beagles, etc.) apparently aren't going to ever become central to the story in any way, and I don't much care for the "Next" introduced in this book, although they haven't done much so far, so they may turn out OK. From the Gracchi to Nero is apparently meant for highschool students, but it's less accessible than Plutarch, contains a lot of untranslated Latin and big chunks that are largely names and dates. It also jumps around a lot, skipping back and forward to focus on different things. And the Kindle version is made even harder to read by the numerous OCR errors and the fact that it's not correctly set up. For example, there is a table of contents that you can use to jump to different sections, but there is no way to jump to the table of contents. And I'm still behind on my target, although I have caught up on my non-fiction sub-target, so if I manage to read a bit more next month I should be back on track. Tiggum fucked around with this message at 09:46 on Sep 3, 2014 |
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Aug 31, 2014 10:14
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Female authors: 17/24 Non-fiction: 9/12 Goodreads. Tunnel Vision was pretty unremarkable. A bit creepy, but probably not as much as the author intended. I enjoyed it, but I probably won't end up remembering much of it. I did like the setting though, of an old asylum in the early 20th century with a network of tunnels underneath. The short stories in the same book all suffer from the problem of having an intriguing setup that builds up quite nicely but then an abrupt ending that doesn't really pay off. The Shedow in particular is nice and creepy right up until the ending where suddenly it loses all its tension. After all the build-up it basically ends with "And then the monster killed her! The end!" Justice and Her Brothers is a weird book. I almost stopped reading after the first two chapters, but kept going because it was pretty short. Can't say it really paid off though. At first it seems like it's just going to be a fairly unremarkable story about childhood or something, but then it gradually starts to seem like something very unpleasant is about to happen. I felt like Thomas was going to turn out to be a budding serial killer or something. But then it takes another turn with the introduction of the psychic neighbour and Justice's own psychic powers, and then the revelation that Thomas (and maybe Levi?) also have psychic powers. But then before anything can really happen it's suddenly over without any apparent resolution. I don't know what I was supposed to have got from it, and I don't understand what actually happened in the end. Justice herself was also weird, in that she was apparently supposed to be 11, but was written in a way that made me think she was half that age. And that only after the first chapter, where I initially thought she was an adult. She was written very oddly. When I first saw the title "The Healer's War" I assumed it was going to be some generic fantasy "chosen-one in a world of sword and sorcery" type of story, so I was pleasantly surprised that it turned out not to be. The book is broken into three sections (although the third section is basically just an epilogue), and I felt that the second section (the most heavily fictionalised) was a little weak, but the first is good enough that the whole thing holds up. My only major criticism of the story is that I don't really think the supernatural elements were necessary. The author states that she felt that the protagonist would clearly have died in part two without the magic, but I don't see that myself and I think the book would have been better off without it, just because it has so little impact on anything. Sticks and Stones was disappointing. The first two parts of the book are set out in a way that makes them hard to follow, with three real life stories of bullying split over six chapters, with the second part of each story appearing in part two of the book so you have time to forget who was who and what was going on before you get back to it. Also it seems that Bazelon struggles to connect the points she wants to make to the stories she's relating. The third part is the weakest though, as it seems really unfocused and meandering, and she doesn't seem to back up a lot of what she says and ends up with a very weak conclusion that comes across as basically "I dunno, maybe Facebook could be more pro-active about stopping bullying?" Basically I feel like there wasn't really much information in this book, and what was there wasn't presented in a way that made any sort of point, other than "bullying is bad and we should probably do something about it but also there are other problems too." I quite liked The Alchemist, but I didn't find it quite believable that the mayor and the wizard would not want to immediately save the town. I understand putting their own interests first and how their plan worked, but it seems like they would have made themselves celebrated heroes by just doing the right thing and would never have had to worry about their position again. Their actual plan seems almost evil for the sake of being evil. Not nearly as good as Pump Six. The Little Sister, The Scarecrow of Oz and Evil Under the Sun were all good but they're all more of the same from their respective series' and I don't really have anything to say about them. I also started reading Sworn to Raise and got about a quarter of the way through it just because I was entertained by how bad it was. It's not a long book though. Kind of like a poor man's Harry Potter, but every flaw in the Harry Potter series is magnified. Especially egregious are the bizarre inconsistencies in the setting and tone. For example, the story seems to be written for children, right up until the point where the protagonist has to sneak out of her room to avoid being raped. It's not even like it's implied only, it's just clearly stated "It wasn't the best place to sleep, but it was better than being raped" (actual quote). And the tone of the narrative doesn't even change in that section. It's almost presented as a minor nuisance, like the protagonist is weighing up the options "I don't want to sleep in the barn, but on the other hand, rape. Hmm..." (not an actual quote). But then after that it goes back to schoolyard bullying being the biggest problem she faces. It seems like the sort of thing a young teenager might write if they were trying for mature and serious but had only ever read YA fiction.
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Sep 29, 2014 07:30
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Female authors: 18/24 Non-fiction: 9/12 Goodreads. Only read two books this month and neither of them much good. Jet was the better of the two, but that's not saying much. The actiony bits are dumb but fun, although sort of written like a video game, with the items the protagonist needs just kind of showing up when she needs them and the bad guys gradually escalating rather than just killing her the most efficient way. The backstory and characterisation are terrible though. I didn't hate it, but I did hate bits of it. Justified, on the other hand, is one of the worst written books I've ever read. If there hadn't been an editor credited I would have assumed it hadn't had one. Madison Knight is a wholly unlikeable protagonist, the story is boring, and the writing is terrible. I read it all the way to the end largely because I couldn't believe how bad it continued to be. In case anyone's interested in the details, I wrote a full review on my blog. Tiggum fucked around with this message at 03:08 on Nov 14, 2014 |
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Nov 2, 2014 07:15
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Female authors: 23/24 Non-fiction: 11/12 Goodreads. The Editor's Companion was a textbook and I wouldn't have read it otherwise. There is some valuable information in it, but it's mixed in with a lot of stuff that seems dubious or wildly speculative, and it's written in a fairly irritating manner. The author's outrageous claims about the many virtues of editors comes across as bizarre and (given that she is an editor herself) narcissistic. The language use and tone also seem very arrogant and condescending, as though she believes that she knows everything and her readers know nothing. And she continually writes "pix" instead of pictures, which I personally find incredibly irritating for some reason. Delusions of Gender is basically a lot of words to say "gender essentialism is bullshit and the brain is way more complex than most people think". Largely preaching to the choir, but it is well-written and easy to read and presents a lot of interesting information. The Fey series was what I most enjoyed reading though. Made me remember why I used to read so much fantasy and reminded me of Magician by Raymond E Feist. The first couple of books had some slightly annoying plot holes (for example, neither side seemed to take advantage of some very important information they received; the Islanders discovering the Shadowlands entrance and the Fey finding out that only two people knew how to make the holy water), but other than that it was good, and so far each book is relatively self-contained rather than just feeling like it's setting up the next one. I really like the way each character has their own understandable motives and goals and the events that play out are driven by the characters, as compared with some books where it feels like characters do things more because the plot requires them to. It definitely helps that there's not good guys and bad guys, just people on different sides of various conflicts, and we get to see things from a wide variety of perspectives. It also seems that any character can die, which raises the stakes. You can never tell how anything is going to play out. Unless it suddenly goes downhill I'll probably finish the series by the end of January.
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Nov 30, 2014 13:26
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Female authors: 27/24 Non-fiction: 12/12 Goodreads. There's a lot of interesting and amusing stuff about English culture and behaviour in Watching the English, and I mostly enjoyed it, but the way it's written is frequently irritating. For one thing, the author's use of language is very, very repetitive, and she uses some words and phrases that I found quite irritating, such as "Eeyoreishness", "oh, come off it", "social dis-ease" repeatedly throughout. There's also the false pretence that the author is just some idiot with no special knowledge and that she's coming upon this information in the same order the reader is and formulating her conclusions as she goes, and obviously that's not the case; Fox is an accomplished anthropologist and books aren't written like that. She collected the information first and put it together in a specific and intentional order, and pretending that that's not the case seems pointless and dumb. The Fey series slows down a bit in The Resistance, but things still move forward in a satisfactory manner and I still really like the way both sides of things are shown, so we hear one character's plans and expectations and then the plans and expectations of an opposing character and then we see the confrontation play out in a way that is totally consistent with the setup. Everything the series has built up comes together in Victory and focuses in on the final act. It's a bit of a deus ex machina, but it's not too bad as it has been set up to some extent in the previous books. It doesn't really feel that the characters earn their final victory and I would have preferred if it had gone differently, but I'm still looking forward to reading the remaining three books though. Don't Pay Bad for Bad is a book of fables. I don't like fables.  The Honey Month is twee as gently caress. The impression I get of the author is that she's the sort of person who likes those god-awful cafés where the furniture is old crates and the drinks are served in jars instead of glasses. The poetry in this book is entirely forgettable, while the short stories range from forgettable to mediocre. The honey reviews are infuriatingly affected and seem completely pointless. They're apparently central to the book as a whole (just look at the title) but I can't see any value to them at all. In fact, the book would be better without them. All they did was put me off, with their pretentious nonsense. I probably still wouldn't have enjoyed the book much, but at least it would have been less irritating. With less than two days to go, I doubt I'll finish anything else this year, so whatever I start next will count for next year's challenge. And finally, here's my top five books for the year:
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Dec 30, 2014 08:50
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guppy posted:19. Diana Wynne Jones - Archer's Goon - I don't really read YA much these days, too old for it, but this was a beloved book from my childhood that was out of print for years, and when it came back into print I bought and re-read it to celebrate. RIP Diana Wynne Jones, the greatest YA author. I've never read this, but I remember really enjoying the TV adaptation. No idea if it's actually good or I was just too young to realise it was bad though.
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Jan 6, 2015 03:11
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