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So this year I am thinking more in terms of personal goals to expand my reading habits, so I will probably be tracking that more than total amount of books (although AreYouStillThere can just track total to not be confusing). Basically the overall total is more of a secondary goal for me with the other goals being my focus. What I am thinking so far is: 70 total books 20 non-fiction books 10 books off of the Lifetime Reading list 12 books by (different) female authors 5 books from (5 different) countries other than USA, Europe, or Japan Read Gravity's Rainbow finally Guy A. Person fucked around with this message at 23:24 on Jan 2, 2014 |
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Jan 2, 2014 23:10
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January Overall: 8/70 Non-fiction: 0/20 Lifetime Reading List: 1/10 Female Authors: 1/12 Non-Europe/USA countries: 1/5 Gravity's Rainbow: 0/1 1. Ham on Rye by Charles Bukowski 2. The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy by Douglas Adams 3. You've Got a Book in You by Elizabeth Sims 4. Werewolves in Their Youth by Michael Chabon 5. God Bless You, Mr. Rosewater by Kurt Vonnegut 6. I Wear the Black Hat: Grappling with Villains (Real and Imagined) by Chuck Klosterman 7. Faust by Johann Wolfgang von Goethe 8. The Alchemist by Paulo Coehlo Off to a good start, I also ended January about a third of the way through 2 other books. I am going to start reviewing in Goodreads most likely, for my own benefit, so that I can come back later and see what I thought of books I have read over the years. And obviously if anyone wants to check them out: my Goodreads (I have not actually started the reviews or really set up my profile yet, just dumped a bunch of books in it)
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Feb 3, 2014 18:49
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Xik posted:It's a "reading challenge", the purpose is to set a personal goal and then try achieve it. It's not called the "novels that don't have illustrations in them challenge" and it's not some serious competition with a prize at the end if you meet the goal. This is basically what I came to post; it's not a "novel reading challenge" it's s "reading challenge". And like others have said, would a Doctor Seuss book count but not Watchmen or Maus? Also, to the movie question, I would count Breaking Bad in a movie watching challenge depending on the criteria I was setting for myself. If my goal was to watch a bunch of classic movies, then I wouldn't. If my goal was to watch more things I could discuss and analyze with people then sure, Breaking Bad is definitely more substantial than The Incredible Burt Wonderstone or a ton of other movies. It's a personal challenge, don't judge people's goals.
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Feb 8, 2014 16:54
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Stravinsky posted:Would you go into a BSS comic reading challenge and list the Dune books then? No because Dune isn't a comic. But comics are things you "read" and this is a "reading challenge". I don't personally add comics (or blogs, or long news articles, or stand alone essays) but other people do and who cares? And I would talk about Nikita in TV/IV if it pertained to the spin off shows. Once again you're focusing on specific wording instead of just enjoying the challenge for yourself. Let everyone else choose how they want to do the challenge. The reason people are posting about it in this thread is for encouragement and you are doing the opposite of that.
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Feb 8, 2014 20:05
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GreyPowerVan posted:Is there really someone going full sperg over the fact that someone who they will never meet and rarely interact with decided that a collection of comic books counts as a book in their own personal reading challenge that doesn't effect anyone else? He is trying to genuinely help people by openly scorning their reading choices and berating them until they choose to read better things. Can't you all see he is the real hero here?
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Feb 9, 2014 06:52
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Poutling posted:Seriously, at least they're reading. The thing is, I don't even necessarily agree with this statement, I actually think if you're in this thread then comics should be a supplement to other literary works. At the very least you should aspire to use comics as a jumping off point to something that is going to be more intellectually challenging (unless all of the comics you read are on the level of Watchmen I guess but even that has a ton of long form prose at the end of each chapter). What I disagree with is a bunch of dudes coming in here to mock and belittle everyone as if that is the way to make the thread better. Like, now we have rhetorical arguments about the value of comics and a bunch of parody posts, yep things are certainly starting to look better now. Raise the level of discourse by posting and discussing what you're reading at least (Stravinsky at least has started doing this). quote:I've hit a bit of a wall in my reading challenge, still hoping to pick up speed when work/life slows down a bit. I've picked up 4 or 5 different books and then put them down again because nothing is catching my interest. I'm currently 2 books behind on my challenge, and alternating between The Invention of Murder: How the Victorians Revelled in Death and Detection and Created Modern Crime by Judith Flanders and The Last Kind Words by Tom Piccirilli. I'm hoping the mix of fiction/non-fiction will jar me out of my burn-out. Reading short story collections/anthologies always helps me with this. You get full stories, often from a variety of different voices, in quick rapid succession. I hit a similar wall a few years ago reading through (ironically) How to Read a Book, and what got me out of my slump was starting my morning commute reading a short story and then finishing my main book when I was more awake later in the afternoon. -- In order to follow thread rules and not be a hypocrite, here is my progress for this month so far: 9. The Planets by Dava Sobel - This was absolutely fantastic. It was recommended in the History Book Thread and I bought it basically on the strength of the gorgeous cover and poster Bobbie Wickham's short description: "Each chapter focuses on a single theme: the chapter about Saturn uses music as a framing device, and compares the rings of Saturn to musical resonance." It goes into the history of each planet's discovery, the physical properties of each planet, their place in mythology and popular culture, as well as a variety of other themes. I am also about halfway through The Lies of Locke Lamora and Collapse: How Societies Choose to Fail or Succeed.
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Feb 11, 2014 17:24
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Stravinsky posted:Asking questions, having discussion and making jokes should not really be construed as negative atmosphere I think. Defend your opinions. For me at least when I see a bunch of star wars and comic books or whatever that puts up a bunch of red flags. I want people to expand their world and sometimes that means pointing out that you have a million comic books in your challenge list in the book barn. And everyone feels stupid sometimes (except me cause I'm super smart and strong and have sex with women) but there's this great resource of a sub forum where you can post about poo poo you don't understand and I'm sure someone can help out and at least point you to the right direction. I mean, the way you started was by asking what you claimed was just a legitimate question ("I honestly just want to know"), and then when people responded you began arguing semantics (whether Breaking Bad would could as a film etc) and picking at their responses, then started to outright mock people after that. I don't disagree with your overall point, just the way you approached it, at least initially. Then a couple of other posters came in and started shitposting us into submission with their parody posts and insults. But then you also posted the Hedayat thread and someone else posted the "Books that aren't awful MEGATHREAD" and both of those threads are pretty cool, and I think a better way to do things . And you at least have started to engage in actual discussion about books. I guess I just think the best way to improve the forum is to bring in more people who are going to post discussion on actual good books (and aren't afraid of the "sci-fi ghetto"), rather than coming in here to try and tear down the system one insult at a time. Guy A. Person fucked around with this message at 21:07 on Feb 11, 2014 |
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Feb 11, 2014 20:54
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February Overall: 14/70 Non-fiction: 3/20 Lifetime Reading List: 1/10 Female Authors: 2/12 Non-Europe/USA countries: 1/5 Gravity's Rainbow: 0/1 9. The Planets by Dava Sobel 10. The Lies of Locke Lamora by Scott Lynch 11. Machine of Death edited by Ryan North 12. Death with Interruptions by Jose Saramago 13. When Prophecy Fails: A Social and Psychological Study of a Modern Group That Predicted the Destruction of the World by Leon Festinger 14. Collapse: How Societies Choose to Fail or Succeed by Jared Diamond Caught up a bit on non-fic since I didn't get in any last month. I talked a little about The Planets earlier in the thread, so I won't go over that again. The Lies of Locke Lamora was pretty solid; I don't typically read a lot of fantasy and I probably won't continue with the series but it was more like a heist story in a fantasy setting. The setting itself seemed unique but unfortunately a lot of it seemed to be built as hooks for the later series so it didn't play a very prominent role in this first book. But luckily the author doesn't beat you over the head with sequel bait, so it still works as a self-contained story. Machine of Death was okay; it is a collection of short stories based on a central idea that the author of Dinosaur Comics or whatever came up with: a machine is invented that takes a drop of your blood and then perfectly predicts your death, but only as a sometimes vague short phrase. It is by all amateur authors and that shows because it was very hit, miss, and miss. A lot of the stories were obviously just set up around an inevitable twist, and while a few of those were fun they mostly just reminded me of watching The ABCs of Death where you spend the whole time trying to guess what the twist is. For some reason there were also way too many stories about the invention of the machine itself, which seems like the least interesting part of the concept. It was actually interesting to read Death with Interruptions immediately after Machine of Death. I wrote a little about it in another thread: quote:It was interesting, although I felt like the style (effectively stream of consciousness with characters speaking in line with no quotation marks are anything, and limited punctuation) was an excuse to jump into different ideas and narrative strings easily without completely resolving others. Which sort've worked since it is basically just a rumination on the nature of death. But at the same time I was just put off by the last bit of narrative which I felt was a bit hokey death falls in love with a dude and then turns into a real girl to be with him. Collapse and When Prophecy Fails were both excellent and informative. I can't offer a lot of insight into Collapse because I don't have the background to argue or expand upon its ideas, but it did offer some really interesting perspectives. I don't fully buy him tying in ancient societal collapse with modern problems because all of the societies he went over were low technology and isolated. Of course, he makes a point that technology won't necessarily save us but at the very least we have global communication and travel as well as scientists like him, so we have a few major legs up on Easter Islanders. Prophecy was good as well, although unfortunately the most interesting parts of the narrative (the drama between the people in this cult) were largely glossed over in favor of the larger scientific point. For instance, the most interesting part of the book is a segment in which a secondary member of the cult starts giving her own predictions and basically tries to wrest control of the group from the previous leader. This takes place over an entire night, but the author states up front that it's not really relevant to his thesis, and then only gives a handful of choice quotes.
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Mar 1, 2014 20:00
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I usually pick my next book when I am 70-ish percent done with my current one and I usually have like a "short list" of books that I am going to read next (like I currently own a couple dozen unread books but I have say 5 I know I am going to choose from next). However, I have started planning further in advance because I am trying to focus on my sub-goals this time around. And, for instance, I want to read 20 non-fiction but I don't even own half that many so I am planning out what I have or can borrow from different services or what I want to buy. Also I want to mix things up so I am not reading 10 non-fic (or whatever else) in the last 2 or 3 months.
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Mar 29, 2014 16:40
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March Overall: 20/70 Non-fiction: 5/20 Lifetime Reading List: 1/10 New Female Authors: 3/12 Non-Europe/USA countries: 1/5 Gravity's Rainbow: 0/1 15. Life and Death are Wearing Me Out by Mo Yan 16. The Rum Diary by Hunter S. Thompson 17. Children Playing Before a Statue of Hercules by David Sedaris 18. On the Road to Freedom: A Guided Tour of the Civil Rights Trail by Charles E. Cobb Jr. 19. Hav by Jan Morris 20. The Big Short: Inside the Doomsday Machine by Michael Lewis I am on track for my overall goal and most of my sub-goals, I do need to catch up with lifetime reading list books. Life and Death - like pretty much everything I have read from Mo Yan - was both hilarious and tragic. I still like Republic of Wine the best, but I think this is the one that I would recommend as a great introduction to his stuff. It begins with a man in hell (the Chinese hell which is more of a general land of the dead and not a place for punishment) who then shortly becomes reincarnated as a donkey. So it is pretty great right from the beginning. The Rum Diary was my first novel by Thompson although I have read some of his other articles. I actually wasn't aware that it was written much earlier than Fear and Loathing, and I wish I had read something more polished or some of his non-fic stuff. But it was still pretty enjoyable and obviously mostly autobiographical. I assumed Children Playing... would be a typical Sedaris essay collection and was surprised that it was actually a short story anthology collected by Sedaris. It has a lot of the usual suspects for a good short story collection including Joyce Carol Oates, Alice Munro, and Flannery O'Connor, so it is unsurprisingly really solid. Hav was alright, although I feel like I would need to be more versed in European culture, history and relationships in order to really get something out of it. It is basically about a fictional city that was a hub for travel between various European nations and the Middle East, so a lot of it has to do with how these various cultures who have had control of the city over the past several hundred years have left their impact on the city. It was originally written in 1985 and the author wrote a second section in 2005 for the 20th anniversary which was pretty cool. I talked about On the Road to Freedom and The Big Short in the non-fiction thread (I highly recommend going there and joining the discussion if you are at all into non-fiction): Guy A. Person posted:On the Road to Freedom was super interesting although I wish it had been more focused and less general (there are a lot of good stories but it doesn't dig deep into anything). At first I didn't like the narrative framework of a tour through famous CIvil Rights landmarks but I actually started to appreciate it later on as it was used to break up the chronology of some of the stories (since a lot of things would start in one city/state and end in another). The best were the quotes from the individuals who lived these stories, and I would have loved to read even more of those.
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Apr 6, 2014 20:05
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Tiggum posted:You could stop going on and on about this and just get the gently caress over it. If reading some comics helps someone work toward a goal and get through other, more challenging stuff without giving up then they should go ahead and put it on their list. I would rather have someone think "well I didn't finish Moby Dick this month but I did read two graphic novels so I can list those and keep going" rather than "I can't finish a single book so I may as well give up and go play video games". I agree with Stravinski that we can probably forgo the discussion though, since there are other places for it. Discussion of literature on this site is already sparse enough without further diluting it.
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Apr 10, 2014 16:54
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Argali posted:Were you stroking your beard and smoking a French cigarette as you wrote this? Just curious. I can't grow a beard. Thanks for emasculating me, dick t 
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Apr 11, 2014 00:06
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April Overall: 27/70 Non-fiction: 5/20 Lifetime Reading List: 2/10 New Female Authors: 4/12 Non-Europe/USA countries: 1/5 Gravity's Rainbow: 0/1 21. The Acts of King Arthur and His Noble Knights by John Steinbeck This was fantastic; it starts out as just a modern translation by Steinbeck but after awhile he starts adding his own flavor to the stories, and that's when it really becomes good. It was disappointing that it ended so early in the cycle (it ends just as Lancelot and Guinevere just get together, so you don't see Mordred or the Grail quest or any of that cool stuff) but I have always been interested in the Arthurian mythology and it has been years since I read The Once and Future King so I wanted to refresh my memory on it. It is also much funnier than I thought it would be, Steinbeck really knows how to riff on some of the crazy logic in the original stories. 22. The Quarry by Ian Banks This was okay. I got it as a kindle daily deal, so maybe it wasn't representative of his other work. It also could just be that I wasn't really in a place to really internalize the whole "dealing with a family member imminently dying of cancer" thing. Also the weird MMORPG subplot seemed totally tacked on. 23. How to Live Safely in a Science Fictional Universe by Charles Yu This was actually a much better story about dealing with the loss of your father. It uses the whole time travel and meta-story stuff beautifully, and was really funny and sweet to boot. 24. Alice's Adventures in Wonderland by Lewis Carroll I read this in basically one sitting after recovering from spending 24 hours creating a web site as just some nice filler to unwind. It is a classic so there is not much to say, but I really love the little language and logic games Carroll plays. It was a nice way to spend an afternoon. 25. Black Dahlia & White Rose by Joyce Carol Oates This was great and I want to read some of her other stories. The title story was especially great, juxtaposing Marilyn Monroe (the White Rose) and of course the infamous Black Dahlia to speak about how women (especially in Hollywood) were viewed at that time. The rest of the stories in the collection were mostly about older women dealing with some type of mundane (but subtly foreboding) situation and were generally really intriguing. 26. Crash Gordon and the Revelations from Big Sur by Derek Swannson So I read the first book in this series a few years back and it was a total clusterfuck. The first half is a fairly interesting coming of age story laced with a bunch of literary references and conspiracy theories, until about halfway through the novel when a character show up to give a 400 page info dump of every major conspiracy theory for the past 50 years before the novel just ends. I was curious how this one would follow up (and honestly the first book was informative even if it was a disaster). This book is still heavy on the random exposition about popular conspiracy theories but it does a better job of spreading them throughout the novel while maintaining a consistent (if somewhat boring) narrative. Honestly this author should just create some kind of comprehensive guide to conspiracy theories of the 20th century and I would read it, although I think he wants to keep writing kinky sex scenes, so that might not work out entirely to his liking. 27. The Nonexistant Knight by Italo Calvino This was fantastic, probably my favorite Calvino to date. I usually find his stuff a little dry (possibly due to the translation) but this one was genuinely really funny. I got a few more of his novellas as part of another kindle sale, so I am looking forward to reading those. -- I am making good progress; I am not really worried about my total goal (especially because at this rate I am going to blow it out of the water) but my other general goal of branching out my reading habits has been going pretty well, although this month was mostly just reading stuff I thought looked cool. The one area I really want to pick up in is books from other countries/cultures, but I need to purchase or acquire some that I have gotten recommendations on. That might be a goal I focus on more for the second half of the year since I have a pretty solid backlog of other stuff, and I really want to hit the non-fiction more over the coming months.
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May 2, 2014 23:26
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Hieronymous Alloy posted:Oh neat! Did you read my King Arthur thread and get inspired, or just independently? Actually no, I did not know about that thread! I was inspired by some threads Liesmith did in Trad Games a long time ago but I never got around to reading, I want to work my way up to Le Morte. Also you should read The Nonexistent Knight if you haven't. It is not about Arthur but Charlemagne and some of his paladins but there is questing and it is awesome and hilarious. They mention Excalibur and some of the bigger names like Roland but they are not the focus.
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May 3, 2014 21:05
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Reading challenge 2014: Not really all that challenging after all
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Jun 1, 2014 15:53
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May Overall: 35/70 Non-fiction: 7/20 Lifetime Reading List: 2/10 New Female Authors: 5/12 Non-Europe/USA countries: 2/5 Gravity's Rainbow: 0/1 28. The Golem and the Jinni by Helene Wecker This was really great and clearly extremely well researched. It would have worked just as well as a story about being an immigrant in turn-of-last-century New York, but blending it with the mythology of each culture allowed it to explore themes about freedom, servitude, the nature of the soul, as well as the different cultural values at play. I was very impressed, and I am looking forward to seeing what she writes next. 29. Feed by M.T. Anderson This was another pleasant surprise. I knew it was YA dystopian novel and was just hoping for something light and hopefully not too heavy handed, but this turned out to actually be really interesting. The "writing like an obnoxious teenager" gimmick was actually fine since it was done more as a parody, and there was a little more depth there outside of the really obvious "corporations are bad and are wrecking everything" core theme. 30. Their Fate Is Our Fate: How Birds Foretell Threats to Our Health and Our World by Peter Doherty Good although I expected it to be more focused on climate change and how this was affecting bird populations. That was a small aspect but it was mostly about how birds transmit and predict diseases, and even then the focus was more on the history of using birds in medical research. It was also unfortunately a little dry, although not as bad as some popular science stuff I have read. So interesting, just not what I expected. 31. The Sheltering Sky by Paul Bowles This was depressing as all hell. It was certainly compelling and well written since I blazed through it and thought about it for long time afterwards. I am not sure overall how I felt about it since I don't think I was really in a good mindset at the time to read something so bleak. 32. Monstress by Lysley Tenorio I just bought this blind off a Kindle Daily Deal and it turned out to be pretty solid. It also luckily fit in with what I am going for with my reading challenge (trying to read more non-white American perspectives) since it is mostly about Filipino-American communities living in/emigrating into California. The title story was great but my favorite was The View from Culion about a leper colony in the Philippines. 33. Inverted World by Christopher Priest This had a compelling hook but was ultimately disappointing since it felt like the author was way more focused on building the intricate sci-fi setting rather than exploring the actual consequences of it. It is ostensibly about a city called Earth that is moving on tracks, where time is measure in miles and a large aspect of life is keeping the city moving and functioning. From there the main character explores the world outside the city and the secrets surrounding it, which ultimately leads to a twist which is pretty cliche and isn't really followed up on. It definitely had the appropriate ideas and themes for good speculative sci-fi but just didn't really have the follow through. 34. Things Fall Apart by Chinua Achebe This was recommended to me in the Books that aren't awful MEGATHREAD (No genre fic). It is about life in an African tribe leading up to British Colonialism and the arrival of Christian Missionaries, and is just heartbreaking and fantastic. I am probably not qualified to comment on it much otherwise, but I was very moved and would strongly recommend. 35. Who Wrote the Bible? by Richard Elliott Friedman This focuses mostly on the Old Testament and especially the first five books (the pentateuch) of the Bible. I was a little disappointed he didn't explore other areas like the New Testament and especially Revelations which has always been a favorite for how abstract and symbolic it obviously is. However, with the depth with which he explores the books he does cover, I can understand why he only focused on that specific part. I grew up Catholic and had 12 years of classes in school studying this stuff, and obviously a lot of modern society has been significantly impacted by Christianity, so it was very interesting and humbling reading about how a lot of these stories which shape the religion were created and built upon by various authors/factions over centuries. -- This was my May synopsis, it just took me several weeks to go back and write it. It was a pretty productive month, and I finally started tackling aspects of my goal which I was really looking forward to, like reading more books from foreign perspectives that I wasn't accustomed to. I need to play catch-up a bit with some of my other challenges (like non-fic and lifetime reading), but I am very happy with what I have done so far.
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Jun 12, 2014 18:16
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Yes read double the books or read nothing.
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Jun 30, 2014 17:24
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June Overall: 41/70 Non-fiction: 8/20 Lifetime Reading List: 4/10 New Female Authors: 7/12 Non-Europe/USA countries: 2/5 Gravity's Rainbow: 0/1 36. The Art of War by Sun Tzu I read this during my commute to and from work one day so I probably need to reread it with a totally different mindset and setting in order to get the most out of it. It was still interesting reading really concise and timeless military knowledge/strategies, but I found it hard to connect ancient military advice and abstract it into lessons for my own life like most people seem to do with the work. Like, there are obviously the old standbys like knowing your enemy and when best to be aggressive etc, but then there are a bunch of things like how to properly fight in and around rivers. 37. The Story of the Stone by Barry Hughart Definitely not as good as Bridge of Birds like many posters have previously stated, but still leagues better than most fantasy I've read. I will probably put off the final book in the collection till much later so it doesn't suffer so much in comparison to these other two, but it is always refreshing to read something like this that is light hearted and imaginative and also just really funny. 38. The Good Earth by Pearl S. Buck This was really fantastic and I loved watching the main character as he basically struggled with class and personal issues but always was at his best when he was just working on and relying on his land to provide for him. I know there are some follow up novels in the trilogy and I like Buck's writing a lot but I mostly just liked reading about this dude and don't want to read about his sons loving everything up. 39. How Dogs Love Us by Gregory Berns I was looking for more non-fic on the Kindle Lending Library and this looked intriguing. It is about a neuroscientist who decided to try and give an awake dog an MRI and the reasoning, training, and conclusions of that experiment. It was a little on the sappy side and full of non-sequiturs but it was also super interesting and the science wasn't overly complicated. 40. Wuthering Heights by Emily Bronte This was way funnier and way more depressing than I initially thought. Victorian lit always catches me off guard in this way even though I have read more than enough to realize that its not just stodgy and boring stuff about guys in top hats (although I read in another thread that the Bronte sisters in particular were mostly parodying the actual boring crap). Another thing that caught me off guard is that everyone except basically Heathcliff are sickly and on the verge of death so he mostly gets what he wants by bullying and overpowering them. 41. The Three Stigmata of Palmer Eldritch by Phillip K. Dick I hadn't read any PKD in a while and was hoping for his brand of trippy introspective sci-fi and was not disappointed. As always his novels tend to suffer from an influx of manic ideas, where he seems to introduce one cool aspect only to abandon it or outright contradict it a short while later. Also, the "which reality is real" schtick gets a little annoying when he overdoes it (the main switcheroo was really telegraphed and quick though so it wasn't as bad as some of his other novels). Still always a pleasure to read though and always gets my mind racing a thousand miles an hour. -- A little late on this again but it is always great to go back over and do a mental review of the books I've read over the month (and then clumsily try to put my thoughts into words).
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Jul 11, 2014 17:53
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July Overall: 47/70 Non-fiction: 10/20 Lifetime Reading List: 5/10 New Female Authors: 8/12 Non-Europe/USA countries: 3/5 Gravity's Rainbow: 0/1 42. Kane and Abel by Jeffrey Archer - This was recommended by an in-law and was much better than I was expecting. There are a few plot contrivances to get the two title characters to interact and remain in conflict at certain points, but it maintains tension throughout, so I am fine with the tradeoff. 43. The Master and Margarita by Mikhail Bulgakov - Absolutely fantastic, which was no surprise. I do want to read more into the specifics of how the novel parodied Soviet Russia, since there were definitely things I picked up on but had no context for. Otherwise it was still an enjoyable and hilarious read. Favorite line: "Dostoyevsky's dead..." "I protest! Dostoyevsky is immortal!" 44. History Lessons: How Textbooks from Around the World Portray U.S. History by Dana Lindaman & Kyle Roy Ward - This was super interesting although it could have been edited a little better with a little more commentary about how things more specifically deviated from American portrayal of history. There were certain passages that were large information dumps when they really only needed to call out a few lines where things were presented differently. Or in cases where the point was that other countries cover certain events in more depth, they could just state that rather than paste the excerpts in full. These are minor nitpicks, but I was more interested in the different perspectives than I was in fully recounted events. 45. The Final Solution: A Story of Detection by Michael Chabon - Man I love when Chabon does his short genre-benders. This was fun and short and just a nice refreshing break while still not being schlock. 46. The God of Small Things by Arundhati Roy - This was likewise amazing, and is potentially my favorite book of the year so far. I loved how the narrative basically spiraled around the event that defined all of these characters, moving backward and forward in time around it, revealing small details until you finally realize why it made such a huge impact. 47. Liar's Poker by Michael Lewis - I am becoming a fan of Lewis; this was a little easier to digest than The Big Short although obviously a little simpler since this was his first book. I'm looking forward to reading Flash Boys since it is obviously about more recent events and trends.
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Aug 4, 2014 22:26
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Haven't updated here in awhile. Since I have a ton I am only going to comment on a few: August - October Non-fiction: 15/20 Lifetime Reading List: 5/10 New Female Authors: 9/12 Non-Europe/USA countries: 4/5 Gravity's Rainbow: 0/1 48. The Magician's Land by Lev Grossman 49. The Crusades: The Authoritative History of the War for the Holy Land by Thomas Asbridge - Very interesting. I had no background in the Crusades, this seemed like a pretty good analysis of each side. Unfortunately a lot of the history centers around the fluctuating popularity in Europe, the political motivations of varying factions, and the fact that a lot of these failed after a strong initial surge when a loan outpost was left surrounded by enemies while everyone back in Europe got bored and gave up. So those parts dragged a little, but it was still interesting information. 50. A Bend in the River by V.S. Naipaul 51. The Best American Essays 2011 52. Bleeding Edge by Thomas Pynchon - This is the first Pynchon where I felt like I actually got a lot of the references. I also had just visited NY so I feel like I got more out of it for that reason, probably not as much as if I lived in or visited NY more frequently. Did not see 9/11 out of nowhere coming. 53. One Summer: America, 1927 by Bill Bryson - Really solid, and I couldn't shut up about it to my friends. Really enjoyed the wide range of stories he was able to tell with the conceit of setting it in this one summer. 54. The Love Letters of Henry VIII to Anne Boleyn by Henry VIII 55. The Year of the Flood by Margaret Atwood 56. The Sheep Look Up by John Brunner 57. MaddAddam by Margaret Atwood - September ended up becoming a bit of a dystopian/post-apocalyptic month. The two Atwood books were sequels to Oryx and Crake and were solid, although I can't help but feel she felt backed into a corner after the first book and decided the apocalypse wasn't that bad, since like 2 dozen people who all knew each other in the same city happened to survive. The Sheep Look up was great, a lot more directly political than a lot of other dystopian stuff I've read, and also way more applicable to modern times (although some of the references were pretty outdated and laughable, like microwaves being dangerous). 58. Longitude by Dava Sobel - I have become a fan of Sobel after reading The Planets and now this. She writes on interesting topics in a much more narrative way. 59. Neverwhere by Neil Gaiman 60. A Fine Balance by Rohinton Mistry - Talked about this a little in another thread. Super depressing but also a really solid read about the caste system in India during the Emergency. 61. Colorless Tsukuru Tazaki and His Years of Pilgrimage by Haruki Murakami 62. Friend of my Youth by Alice Munro
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Nov 2, 2014 21:18
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Stravinsky posted:You really should have seen it coming. Its placed at the right time period and hints at activities nonstop from I think the midpoint onwards. Let me rephrase: I sort've saw it coming, but wasn't sure if the novel was going to end before it reached that point. It happens fairly late in the book and I was resisting the urge to skip ahead to see if they addressed it, so I began to suspect it would leave that out and keep the book as kind of a time capsule of pre-9/11 NY.
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Nov 4, 2014 20:04
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So I am likely going to fall just short of my overall goal and varying degrees of short on all of my other goals. I had some good momentum but I only read a book on the War of the Roses (called the War of the Roses) and a retelling of the King Arthur story called Arthur Rex in November, and then I started and am currently reading A Brief History of Seven Killings. Once the cold weather hit it affected my ability to read outside on my breaks or while waiting for the bus which was almost 50% of my daily reading time, and I had a bunch of other stuff between holidays and family weddings etc which slowed me down. I am still pretty pleased with my progress, setting a bunch of secondary goals to diversify my reading habits helped a great deal, and setting them higher than I initially wanted to did spur me to amass a backlog of cool looking books. I will still be reading a few books before the end of the year, including trying to read Gravity's Rainbow when I have several days of break with nothing to do, so I will post an end of year update. I am not sure if I will track my progress in the thread next year and might instead just opt to read cool books as they strike my fancy, but I am glad to have used this thread to help push me.
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Dec 8, 2014 22:45
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So I poo poo the bed at the end here, falling short of all of my goals. After averaging slightly more than 6 books a month through October I only read 3 total across November and December. My last book was A Brief History of Seven Killings by Marlon James which is a rad book and a good note to go out on. I'm not going to post a full list of everything, just some stats and highlights below: Final Overall: 65/70 Nonfiction: 16/20 Lifetime Reading List: 5/10 New Female Authors: 9/12 Non-Europe/USA/Japan authors: 4/5 Gravity's Rainbow: Nope Favorite Books of the Year The Planets by Dava Sobel - I love how this book blends multiple forms of nonfiction (the physical characteristics of each planet, the history of their discovery, the mythology surrounding their names) with whimsy and even the author's own feelings and personal story Life and Death are Wearing Me Out by Mo Yan - Mo Yan's stuff is knee slapping hilarious while being tragic at the same time, sometimes even in the same sentence The Acts of King Arthur and His Noble Knights by John Steinbeck - I was never super into King Arthur stuff outside of Once and Future King but Steinbeck's retelling of the legend really managed to capture the magic of the stories. I really wish more was written and it didn't end right at the point of Lancelot's fall The Nonexistent Knight by Italo Calvino - I read this shortly after Steinbeck which was great timing because it parodies all of the chivalry of those types of stories and is genuinely funny The Master and Margarita by Mikhail Bulgakov - I read this and got a little extra help from a friend's Russian gf which was cool because I didn't quite understand stuff like people willing to kill over an apartment or the foreign currency bit. Highly recommend this method The God of Small Things by Arundhati Roy - A fantastic book, likely my favorite of the year. The book is written in such a way that the climax radiates outward from the center of the narrative, going into the future to show how strongly it impacted the entire world of these characters while setting the context for it in their past. One Summer: America, 1927 by Bill Bryson - I realized I should probably include this as a favorite since I couldn't shut up about it at the time, telling all of my friends and family the little factoids and junk. A Brief History of Seven Killings by Marlon James - A great final book of the year; a fictionalized version of actual (super crazy) events, which even speculates on the reasoning behind and the implication of said events. I am pretty fresh off this book so I don't think I could even do it justice to talk about it, but it made me want to do a lot of research into Jamaican politics and sociology in the 70s which is certainly something I wasn't interested in before.
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Jan 5, 2015 19:41
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