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Sodacan told me about this sweet challenge. I've really fallen behind in reading since becoming a ~professional office worker~. I have unread books I need to get out of the way! I'm going to read 24 books this year. Of special note, I am finally going to complete that goddamn Infinite Jest. Currently reading Foucault's Pendulum and From the Tree to the Labyrinth.
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Jan 21, 2015 17:23
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Mr. Squishy posted:Anyone want to suggest a wildcard for me? Try James Agee. A Death in the Family is autobiographical and won a Pulitzer Prize. Let Us Now Praise Famous Men is considered his best work. I've been trying to find another copy online of Make It Scream Make It Burn, a fantastic analysis piece by Leslie Jamison about Cotton Tenants which became Let Us, but for some reason that article has disappeared over the last month or two. If you can find it, it's also amazing.
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Jan 30, 2015 16:33
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Amy Stewart also wrote The Drunken Botanist, which is like a lovely little encyclopedia (with a beautiful hardcover edition) about herbs, spices, and so on used in brewing, distilling, and infusing. It includes some recipes! It's pretty fascinating.
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Jan 30, 2015 17:23
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ToxicFrog posted:14. Reasons for the Decision of the Associate Chief Justice J.D. Rooke in Meads v. Meads (2012 ABQB 571) by J.D. Rooke Are you a Popehat reader, too? That's where I first came across these two items within a shared context. Pretty fascinating stuff. Also, that Alberta judge did a fantastic job writing his analysis. January 1/24 1. Foucault's Pendulum - Umberto Eco. This didn't end as I had expected it would, but that is probably because I felt too optimistic about the protagonist's character. As usual, an Eco book is a mental gymnastics course. I always feel obligated to do homework so that I can understand the foreign language quotes (for the love of god, I don't speak French or Italian, so why am I doing this?) and grasp at least some of the references. I came out of the book more interested in Spain's revolutionary history, so one of my next reads will probably be some historical nonfiction. This probably counts as a mystery. (I'm saving that post-modern appellation for Jest.) Still working on the Tree and the Labyrinth, but I started Mort(e) last night. I really expected a little more from the premise, but I probably shouldn't have. I wouldn't recommend it, but I feel obligated to finish.
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Feb 3, 2015 14:35
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Huh, must be more readers of those blogs here than I figured! Anyway, I've had a little time to catch up on reading. Mostly delicious junk reading... 7/24 novels read. 2. Read a female author- re-read Elizabeth Moon's Echoes of Betrayal, which I last read a year or so ago. Forgot I had already received a copy as a gift and purchased an e-book edition. Finished up the Paladin's Legacy set by also reading Limits of Power and Crown of Renewal. I was mostly satisfied with how these tied up the Paksworld books. I assume there won't be any more books published in that setting, though Moon did leave herself some opportunities for further stories there. I was disappointed with how Dorrin's tale was ended. She was a protagonist with many ties to other characters in the series, but her ending turns away from those social links entirely. It didn't suit her development. The additional gnome-based stuff was rad, though. Love them gnomes. Also read Emmi Itäranta's Memory of Water. It was a pretty quick read, and good, but something really nagged at me the whole time: how did Scandinavia adopt Sen no Rikyu's tea ceremony as an embedded cultural practice of their own in this setting? Why are those trappings necessary for the story? As a novice in chanoyu myself, that stuck with me and not in the good way I had hoped for. The question went unanswered. I do hope to see another novel. The ending tried for the typical turning away from the tale, but Itäranta either couldn't or wouldn't go all the way with it. Could have been an editorial demand. 11. Read something on love - Robert Repino's Mort(e). Domesticated animals! Ants! A genocidal war against humankind! I expected a fun read, but that wasn't really what I ended up with. Repino was focused on making this a dour slog with dreadful maundering on the nature of religion, love, and humanity. Dreadfully dull, poorly paced, thinly characterized, yadda yadda. Kind of read like someone was going to write furry erotica but decided to clean it up for a general audience and then tack on poorly thought out cultural criticism for depthiness' sake. I finished it because I feel compelled to finish books I start. 12. Read something about space- Iain Banks' Against a Dark Background. I've read nearly all the Culture novels at this point, but I always enjoy Mr. Banks' style. I was saddened by his passing last year; that was the loss of a strong voice. The death toll of named characters in this novel was pretty damned high, but while I liked the characters, I didn't feel much sorrow for their deaths. They felt like pretty inevitable endings, and since few of them were more than barely sketched out, I wasn't terribly attached to them. The protagonist's voice didn't leave them much room. By the end there were still some unexplained questions, like why Cenuij disliked dear protag so strongly and the Huhsz's response to their quarry's fate. Might read Tennessee: A Short History next. Still have not completed From the Tree to the Labyrinth.
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Feb 8, 2015 02:17
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thehomemaster posted:So that's a no? It looks beautiful, sounds exciting and fresh, but it's definitely not a recommendation? Could save myself some money... A solid nope. Save the money.
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Feb 9, 2015 21:26
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So I decided I'd read some books written by goons. Here's one! 8/24 22. A mystery. The Golden Assassin, by Chris Drumm. I intend to leave an amazon review of this because more reviews always help! Assassin is a murder mystery in a steampunk/fantasy setting. I do like -punk stories where class differences are actually explored and earn the genre name, so this hit the spot. The writing suffers from some amateurish decisions (in the first few pages, we read a description of the protagonist's appearance when he looks in a mirror; the ending is hit by a sudden compulsion to reveal the villain's cleverness all at once) and odd pacing. A mission unrelated to the central story takes up a huge chunk of the middle of the novel, and while it was an interesting job, I wanted to get back to the intrigue and investigation part of the story. The central structure of the tale revolves around a caste system beginning to fail and ancestral ghosts who return to grant magic to their descendants, and the story hangs quite well on these actually important bits of world-building. I say "actually important" because as a reader (and horrible writer) of fantasy myself, I know the general pattern is to shovel in loads of (never used) setting. Drumm fairly neatly avoids that. This novel is apparently the first of a series (a trilogy?) though I don't believe the others have been released. Think I'm going to try Sekret next. It's set in Russia, so that qualifies as red, right?!
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Feb 20, 2015 01:32
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9/24 The Blind Owl - Not sure how I feel about this. Started out kinda irritated with the story, then wound up repulsed and confused. Working as intended? I guess I will have to revisit it in the future.
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Mar 16, 2015 20:15
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ZakAce posted:#18: The Drunken Botanist - Amy Stewart: An overview of plants and their relation to various alcoholic drinks. Until I read this book, I didn't know there was such a thing as coffee beer, which I will probably try at some point. 4/5. Yesss! I love this book, and the hardbound edition is beautiful. She has at least a couple other botany books (Wicked Plants looks promising).
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Mar 18, 2015 14:25
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10, 11, 12: The first three books of Kushiel's Legacy by Jacqueline Carey. (Kushiel's Dart, Kushiel's Chosen, Kushiel's Avatar.) The first book starts out incredibly slowly and is front-loaded with exposition that doesn't necessarily pay off even in the first novel. The next two books are pretty solid adventures with an established romance subplot. Re-read the first and followed up with the second two on a rec from a fellow Thunderdomer. Needed to research some fantasy romance! 13. The Orphan's Tales: In the Night Garden by Catherynne Valente. Several people have recommended her works for their lyrical prose style. Night Garden uses the stories-within-stories framing device and is more notable in that most of the protagonists are female characters, which gets me hype. Personally, though, I find the actual style to be overwrought and nearly at the edge of my tolerance for cleverness and purpleness.
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Jun 3, 2015 14:15
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My latest three: Ancillary Justice, Ancillary Sword, and Rosemary's Baby. Will probably update this post with thoughts later. Have fallen a bit behind on booklording.
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Jul 28, 2015 13:41
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RedTonic posted:My latest three: So I ended up hitting a wall with Infinite Jest. Looks like I only got 16/24 read this year, but I feel like I'm forgetting a few.
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Dec 7, 2015 16:02
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