|
Aiming for 30 books this year. It sounds doable, but I probably only hit about 30 last year with the help of some unfortunate sick days, so gonna try that again this year with (hopefully) less illness! I'll be tracking with Goodreads, so feel free to add me, etc. Also, I was already planning to read more more histories and female authors (and maybe actually get around to reading some Pynchon) this year, so I'll take on Stravinsky's challenge while I'm at it. Do people typically count audiobooks in this, or is that more of a 'at your own discretion' kinda thing?
|
#
¿
Jan 3, 2015 00:04
|
|
|
|
| # ¿ May 21, 2024 04:16 |
|
|
Elbow, you could try out some contemporary Irish poets and see if it's more to your liking. Seamus Heaney is the obvious go-to poet, but I've always been partial to Derek Mahon myself (A Disused Shed in Co Wexford and The Spring Vacation stand out in particular). There's also Thomas Kinsella, Medbh McGuckian, Patrick Kavanagh, Paul Muldoon, Michael Longley, and more that I can't think of at the moment. The Faber Book of Contemporary Irish Poetry is a decent anthology, but it can be difficult to find and is pretty hefty. IIRC there's another anthology that was released last year that's supposed to be good too, and covers a much wider range of poets, so that might work too if the poems you find online spark your interest. The generation after Yeats often addresses/deals with the civil conflict and its impact on cultural and personal identity, as well as the impact that conflict has had in everyday life. It's powerful stuff, and the language (at least, in the poems I've read) is usually straightforward. Also not usually happy. :V
|
|
#
¿
Jan 3, 2015 10:17
|
|
|
Tiggum posted:The Importance of Being Earnest is hilarious. And pairs well with Tom Stoppard's Travesties while you're at it.
|
|
#
¿
Jan 20, 2015 07:10
|
|
|
January update! 1. The Last Man by Mary Shelley (2: Read a female author) This was a strange blend of Romantic history/biography and 'futuristic apocalypse'. I didn't know this going in, but the main characters are biographical sketches of Byron and Percy Bysshe Shelley from Mary Shelley’s point of view, except that her father wouldn't let her write a biography, so she novelized it instead. Her descriptions of 2096 from the perspective of someone living in the mid-1800s were more entertaining (airships! plague carts! Greece, reunited!), but she doesn’t go into a lot of depth on that end, which is a shame. Not a particularly easy read, but interesting. 2. The Magician’s Land by Lev Grossman I didn’t like the first book and continue to feel strong ambivalence toward the second book, but I see why everyone liked this book so much: it's a better book, and a fun one at that. For one, I could actually stand to read about Quentin this time. Grossman also seems to have tuned his pacing a bit tighter, so the story is always rolling even with all the PoV changes. 3. The Handmaid’s Tale by Margaret Atwood (19. The color red) Definitely dug this book, though it's unnerving how relevant the book and its fundamentalist future still is ~30 years later. The breeding program with the Handmaids and the loss of autonomy reminded me a lot of Octavia Butler's Dawn actually, which I guess makes sense seeing as they were released around the same time. I actually listened to this on Audible about halfway through before picking up the Kindle version to read the rest of it because I got impatient, but went back to finish listening because Claire Danes does a great job. 4. The Importance of Being Earnest by Oscar Wilde (17. A play) Fantastic comedy of manners, and a light read after The Handmaid's Tale. I agree with whoever it was who said that this was a good intro play for folks to get into. I read this as background for Tom Stoppard's Travesties, which I'm really looking forward to. Working on Lord of Light by Roger Zelazny right now, but I've been picking at Haddawy's Arabian Nights translation too (which I'm really enjoying over the Burton, if you're into that kind of thing.)
|
|
#
¿
Jan 31, 2015 08:58
|
|
|
saphron posted:January: 5. Trust Me, I'm Lying: Confessions of a Media Manipulator by Ryan Holiday (6. An essay) An angry, bitter critique of online media manipulation. The book read like a series of blog posts/essays slammed together and could have used some tighter editing, but it was an interesting read nonetheless. Good if you feel like being grumpy and/or depressed after about the current state of mass media. 6. Code Name Verity by Elizabeth Wein (11. Something on either hate or love) A bittersweet/sad story about a British intelligence agent and her pilot best friend who get shot down and separated during a mission into France during WWII. It's nominally YA (simpler language, very little on-screen violence, requires some suspension of disbelief) but the subject matter (torture, warfare, and especially one of the main scenes toward the end of the book) was darker and more nuanced than I expected, but definitely appreciated. The heart of the book is a female adventure story though, and I was surprised by...well, how surprised/happy I was to read a book focused on these two women and their friendship, instead of a traditional romance (teased about through interactions, and otherwise downplayed) or what have you -- rarer than it should be, for sure. The book wasn't perfect, but if you can roll with the implausibility of the story's premise, it's a great book and one hell of a tearjerker. 7. The Crown Tower by Michael Sullivan I wanted to like this book more than I did, but I'm willing to concede that starting with Riyria Chronicles vs. Riyria Revelations was a mistake, and have started on Theft of Swords to see if it works better. That said, I really enjoyed Gwen's story, and am sad that she's supposed to only be a minor character in Revelations. Also what the hell was up with that abrupt ending? :| 7/30 books so far, which is technically ahead of schedule, but I'm slowing down and have some dense books coming up: Autumn in the Heavenly Kingdom, The Hindu Mind, maybe Travesties or finally pushing through Arabian Nights. Also Traitor's Blade, which I'm super excited about starting!
|
|
#
¿
Mar 2, 2015 10:15
|
|
|
saphron posted:1. The Last Man by Mary Shelley (2: Read a female author) 8. Traitor's Blade by Sebastien de Castell I feel weirdly ambivalent about this book. On the one hand, it was good enough that I didn't want to put it down, and I enjoyed the ride. A good ol' swashbuckling adventure with witty banter? Sure! On the other hand, parts of the book just didn't sit all that well with me (interlude with the priestess stands out the most, though there were other parts too, and an ending that felt one deus ex machina on top of another). I'll probably get around to reading the next book at some point, but I don't feel compelled to hunt it down immediately. 9-11. Riyria Revelations series (Theft of Swords, Rise of Empire, Heir of Novron) by Michael J. Sullivan I started Theft of Swords as an audiobook, and then got impatient about 3/4th of the way through and bought the drat ebook to jump ahead. And then the next one. And then the next one. A fun, entertaining fantasy read that had much less scheming thievery than I expected, and much more adventure and interesting cast of characters. 12. Invisible Cities by Italo Calvino (reread, 8. Something post-modern) The first time I read this was in a series of hospital waiting rooms, so I wanted to give this a proper reread. Still goddamn beautiful. It's been a lovely month, so I ended up binging on genre fiction for the most part, fantasy escapism and all. Hoping to get back to Autumn in the Heavenly Kingdom soon, but I also have Satin Island to read for book club. Woop woop. Also, someone wildcard me please!
|
|
#
¿
Apr 4, 2015 07:00
|
|
|
ulvir posted:History of the Siege of Lisbon by José Saramago Looks neat, cheers!
|
|
#
¿
Apr 5, 2015 02:50
|
|
|
saphron posted:saphron posted: A weird month, a lot of ambivalence, and maybe a little regret in retrospect. Welp! 13. Ink and Steel by Elizabeth Bear I received this as a Christmas gift from a friend and didn't realize this was part of a larger series when I started. I'm not sure what context I was missing as a result, but I enjoyed the book as a a an entertaining alt-history Shakespeare/Marlowe slashfic with a bit of Faerie thrown in for good measure. Fun enough to finish, but I don't feel compelled to seek out other books from the series. 14. Vision in Silver by Anne Bishop Vision in Silver is book 3 of Bishop's current urban fantasy series, but unlike a lot of urban fantasy stories (or at least, of the ones I've read, and I haven't read a lot so ymmv), the werefolks and vampires are the natives who belong there, and the humans are the intruders. There's a pretty ham-fisted allegory of the land as an alternate America, and Meg, the main protagonist, still grates on me from time to time, and the familiar strain of 'love the land and love nature' that always runs through all of her stories...but I have a teenage-sized soft spot for Bishop's stuff. It was good fluff reading for the next book, which I was reading at the same time... 15. Autumn in the Heavenly Kingdom: China, the West, and the Epic Story of the Taiping Civil War by Stephen R. Platt (5. A History) Platt's account of the Taiping Civil War tells a tale of the bloody 14-year Chinese civil war that helped define the foreign policy of modern China. I picked this book up because I wanted to learn more about the era surrounding the Opium Wars and...man, this entire era of colonialism is a cavalcade of misunderstandings and terrible poo poo. Platt chose not to cover the entire civil war, but instead focuses on providing both domestic and international motivations that drove the civil war from bad to worse -- like how much the British treatment of the Taiping civil war and the American civil war both influenced British actions in both countries and (perhaps inadvertently) shaped the futures of both. This is a history book with a thesis, but a well-articulated one that is well worth the read if you're curious about modern Chinese history. 16. Satin Island by Tom McCarthy A (probably?) postmodern novel about an unfullfilled corporate anthropologist charged with the impossible task of writing a definitive study on mankind in the modern era. Despite veering close to precious at times, I enjoyed the book...mostly. I especially liked the passage about participant ethnography, but I could sympathize too (maybe a little too well) with the quest to clean a desk to unblock your brain, or staring intently at buffering bars. Admittedly, I was pushing to read the book the night before a book club meeting, but I ended the book feeling as disconnected from the main character as the main character was to the world around him. Weird, to be sure. I'm almost done with K.J. Parker's Academic Exercises, which I'm really enjoying, and just started my challenge book as well (The History of the Siege of LIsbon). There's a bunch of physical books I should get around to reading too, but so far I've been reading in bed with my Kindle instead. First world problems, I has them. 
|
|
#
¿
May 8, 2015 07:38
|
|
|
saphron posted:saphron posted: 17. Academic Exercises by K.J. Parker (21. Short Stories) 18. The Paper Magician by Charlie N. Holmberg 19. Orlando by Virginia Woolf 20. Uprooted by Naomi Novik (15. Something published this year or the past three months) 21. The Future of the Mind: The Scientific Quest to Understand, Enhance, and Empower the Mind by Michio Kaku 22. Karen Memory by Elizabeth Bear 23. The Color of Magic by Terry Pratchett 24. What It Is Like to Go to War by Karl Marlantes 25. The Emperor’s Blades by Brian Staveley 26. The Three-Body Problem by Liu Cixin (12. Something dealing with space) 27. The Goblin Emperor by Katherine Addison 28. Sorcerer to the Crown by Zen Cho (3. A non-white author) 29. The Flamethrowers by Rachel Kushner 30. A Fighting Chance by Elizabeth Warren (18. Biography) 31. Wool Omnibus by Hugh Howey 32. The Rose and the Thorn by Michael J. Sullivan Slacked off on posting for a while, but I managed to get through a bunch of books over the summer, if not any of the books I meant to get through at the start of summer. Standouts include Academic Exercises (which ended as enjoyable as it started), Orlando (probably the cheeriest of Virginia Woolf’s books, and the sweetest of love letters), Three-Body Problem, The Goblin Emperor, and A Fighting Chance (I’m wary of political biographies but Warren’s story left me feeling hopeful about America’s ability to unfuck itself, despite the odds). I was also especially fond of Karen Memory and Uprooted, which had female casts that were awesome and that left me feeling warm and fuzzy inside. \o/ So far, I’ve read 32/30 books, which happened a lot faster than I expected, and have a lot of challenge books to go.
|
|
#
¿
Sep 30, 2015 07:15
|
|
|
ulvir posted:September update: Please suggest a biography to read, otherwise I'll land on something lulzy like Morrissey's autobiography or whatever Alexander Hamilton by Ron Chernow.
|
|
#
¿
Sep 30, 2015 18:29
|
|
|
|
| # ¿ May 21, 2024 04:16 |
|
|
saphron posted:1. The Last Man by Mary Shelley (2: Read a female author) Hoooboy, pushed to finish the challenge and just managed to by the skin of my teeth (though being housebound because of a bad cold helped). That said, I read a lot of good books to close out the year, and I can't really be sad about that! Brief, incoherent thoughts below, since it's kinda late... 33. A Night in the Lonesome October by Roger Zelazny Been meaning to read this since last year's October monthly challenge, but hadn't gotten around to getting a copy of it until this year, and then I wanted to wait until October proper to read it (and then did a read-aloud for some friends). That said, it was a drat entertaining book. 34. The Traitor Baru Cormorant by Seth Dickinson I love too-smart-for-their-own-good sneaky protagonists, so I totally dug this and am looking forward to the next book! 35. Three Parts Dead by Max Gladstone 36-7. A Study in Scarlet and Sign of the Four by Arthur Conan Doyle (22. A mystery) Hadn't read any of the original Sherlock Holmes stories before, so this seemed fitting for the mystery category. I was surprised by how different ACD's Holmes is from the modern interpretations, which emphasize the obsessive psychopath and downplay the other elements of Holmes' (and Watson's) characters. I really enjoyed both A Study in Scarlet and Sign of the Four, and think I prefer ACD's characters to the modern takes. 38. History of the Siege of Lisbon by Jose Saramago (14. Wildcard) I'm ashamed to say that I don't remember who gave me this wildcard. It took me three false starts and six months to tackle this book, but I'm really glad I did because it's such a brilliant book. Especially loved the (re)creation of history and can completely sympathize with the proofreader's frustration at the beginning and...yeah, thanks to whoever directed me to this! 39. Motherland Fatherland Homelandsexuals by Patricia Lockwood (7. A collection of poetry) 40. The Blind Owl by Sadegh Hedayat Beautiful, wrecked me emotionally for half a day. When I have more time (and distance and maybe out of the emotional whirlwind that is the holiday season), I want to reread this because the first reading barely scratched the surface. 41. The Satanic Verses by Salman Rushdie (20. Something banned or censored) Really, really enjoyed this book. I read this as a humorous chaser to The Blind Owl, which...made Gibreel's dreams an unintentionally fascinating comparison point to the descent into madness in The Blind Owl. Saladin's difficulty reconciling a split cultural identity was (minus the metamorphosis part) pretty similar to my own struggles (being asian-american). I'll be thinking about this book for a while. 42. Cloud Atlas by David Mitchell (16. That one book that has been sitting on your desk waiting for a long time) My boss lent this book to me three years ago and I can finally give it back to him. Interesting book, but I have no desire to watch the movie now that I've read it. 43. Gender Outlaws: The Next Generation ed. Kate Bornstein and S. Bear Bergman (4. Philosophy) 44. Travesties by Tom Stoppard (9. Something absurdist) Definitely up there with Arcadia as one of my favorite Stoppard plays. I can see why my friend recommended I read The Importance of Being Earnest first, though. Booklord Challenge in full: 1. The vanilla read a set number of books in a year. 44/30 2. Read a female author (The Last Man by Mary Shelley) 3. The non-white author (Sorcerer to the Crown by Zen Cho) 4. Philosophy (Gender Outlaws: The Next Generation ed. Kate Bornstein and S. Bear Bergman) 5. History (Autumn in the Heavenly Kingdom: China, the West, and the Epic Story of the Taiping Civil War) 6. An essay (Trust Me, I’m Lying: Confessions of a Media Manipulator by Ryan Holiday) 7. A collection of poetry (Motherland Fatherland Homelandsexuals by Patricia Lockwood) 8. Something post-modern (Invisible Cities by Italo Calvino) 9. Something absurdist (Travesties by Tom Stoppard) 10. The Blind Owl 11. Something on either hate or love (Code Name Verity by Elizabeth Wein) 12. Something dealing with space (The Three-Body Problem by Liu Cixin) 13. Something dealing with the unreal (Wool Omnibus by Hugh Howey) 14. Wildcard (History of the Siege of Lisbon by Jose Saramago) 15. Something published this year or the past three months (Uprooted by Naomi Novik) 16. That one book that has been sitting on your desk waiting for a long time (Cloud Atlas by David Mitchell) 17. A play (The Importance of Being Earnest by Oscar Wilde) 18. Biography (A Fighting Chance by Elizabeth Warren) 19. The color red (The Handmaid’s Tale by Margaret Atwood) 20. Something banned or censored (The Satanic Verses by Salman Rushdie) 21. Short stories (Academic Exercises by K.J. Parker) 22. A mystery (A Study in Scarlet and The Sign of the Four by Arthur Conan Doyle) saphron fucked around with this message at 10:10 on Jan 1, 2016 |
|
#
¿
Jan 1, 2016 10:08
|
|