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I am going to take up the challenge, mostly so I will actually write something about books after I read them for once. 1. The vanilla read a set number of books in a year. [12/52] 4. Philosophy 5. History 6. An essay 7. A collection of poetry 9. Something absurdist 10. The Blind Owl (Free translation if your ok with reading on a screen or cant find a copy!) 11. Something on either hate or love 13. Something dealing with the unreal 14. Wildcard (Some one else taking the challenge will tell you what to read) 17. A play 18. Biography 19. The color red 21. Short story(s) 22. A mystery 1. The Son (Philipp Meyer) This book tells the story of a Texas family covering 1850s to present day, mainly skipping between the perspective of three individuals. As is often a problem with POV book, I found myself more interested in one POV than the others and getting frustrated by the intervening chapters. The character holding the book together really is Eli but the other POVs do work nicely to provide differing opinions on Eli. Nonetheless it's worth reading, particularly for the sections about the Comanche. 2. A Meal in Winter (Hubert Mingarelli) The title of this novella lays out the central event of the book - a meal between adversaries during WWII. The book is written in first person from the perspective of an individual working as a group to round up Jews hiding in the Polish countryside and essentially is a day in the life of. 3. Half of a Yellow Sun (Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie) About Nigeria in the 1960s, focusing on a group of upper class individuals and the impact of the Biafran war on their lives. This is another POV book, from the perspective of a Igbo woman, her house boy and an English man (the boyfriend of the woman's sister). I'm completely ignorant of Nigeria, never mind the Biafran war, so cannot comment on accuracy. For me the POV style worked better in this book than The Son. The book is divided into two time periods (Early and Late Sixties), with each covered twice. Certain events are skipped the first time and we are left to guess at what exactly happened, these are filled in the second time the period is covered, this was a nice twist to the usually POV set-up. 4. Invisible Cities (Italo Calvino) I read this because it is the book of the month and not something I would usually consider. Marco Polo describes cities to Genghis Khan... I like this book, if I'm not sure quite why. Even though the cities fly by it is quite relaxing in a way. The cities are divided into themes (some odd like "Thin Cities" others more descriptive). I think it merits a reread down the line to better grasp the themes. 5. Troubles (J.G. Farrell) The last paperback book I bought before I got my ereader and has been neglected ever since. A crumbling formerly grand hotel (and its anglo-irish denizens) mirrors the disintegration of british rule in Ireland during 1919-1921 and more generally the British Empire. At the outset we know the story will end inevitably with the destruction of the hotel and we follow the insular concerns of the residents and their troubles as outside troubles overtake them. The general political situation is interspersed in the text as a serious of newspaper articles. An interesting view of a world which no longer exists. 6. Ancillary Justice (Ann Leckie) This book has received a lot of attention over its treatment of pronouns/gender. The narrator is the remnants of a ship's AI from a society of humans which seemingly is gender blind. Therefore narrator is unable to tell genders off-hand, refers to everyone in her internal monologue as "she" and misgenders people from other societies. To me this was the least interesting aspect of a book I enjoyed. There didn't seem to be a point to this within the story told. What was interesting for me was the concept of an AI which controlled and saw through the eyes of many bodies (ancillaries) and then found herself localised to one body only. This created a contrast between the flash backs, where we receive abundant information about a situation, to the present crippled state of the AI, where only one ancillary remains. 7. Ancillary Sword (Ann Leckie) The sequel to Ancillary Justice. This book deals only with the present and while this is necessary since this previous book finished the flashback plot, I found myself missing the contrast between the chapters. The story was ok, the ending is a bit abrupt, very much suffering from middle book syndrome. The book was disappointing after Ancillary Justice. 8. Boy A (Jonathan Trigell) I didn't like this much, I had previously seen the film version and it's probably better just to watch that. 9. The Absolutist (John Boyne) From the outset we know that the main character Tristan is somehow involved in his friend Will's death, the events leading up to the death are mixed with chapters dealing with Tristan's visit to Will's sister, ostensibly to return the letters she had sent to Will. Things couldn't possibly (and don't) end well. I don't want to give the story away, so suffice to say I recommend it. 10. Borstal Boy (Brendan Behan) It was one of the many, many books banned here (Ireland) and I kept that in mind while I read it. The book is about the author's time in borstal, a prison for young offenders, in the UK in the 1940s. The reasons why it was banned in the past are obvious enough: the author is an IRA member, a socialist, is critical of the Catholic church, is excommunicated and there are frequent comments about sexuality, especially homosexuality. This book is primarily a coming-of-age for the author and we see his attitudes change as he gets to know his "enemy" and experience something outside of the society he was raised in. A nice book, though not everyone will like the song lyrics and poems throughout. 11. Germany Memories of a Nation (Neil MacGregor) This book was a present. It's a long time since I read a book with lots of colour pictures, we get a whirlwind tour of probably the most important events in the german-speaking world over the last ~500 years shown through important artwork, objects and buildings. It accompanies a BBC radio series. 12. The Black Velvet Gown (Catherine Cookson) Formulaic, easy read while I was sick. Anyone like to suggest a wildcard?
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Feb 19, 2015 22:02
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| # ¿ May 21, 2024 05:20 |
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1. The vanilla read a set number of books in a year. [15/52] 4. Philosophy 5. History 6. An essay 7. A collection of poetry 9. Something absurdist 10. The Blind Owl (Free translation if your ok with reading on a screen or cant find a copy!) 13. Something dealing with the unreal 14. Wildcard (Some one else taking the challenge will tell you what to read) 17. A play 18. Biography 19. The color red 21. Short story(s) 22. A mystery A slow month for me, but a few great books. 13. Fire from Heaven (Mary Renault) Historical fiction imagining the childhood of Alexander the Great. Renault immerses the reader in life in ancient Greece and doesn't seem to make any allowance for modern sensibilities, which is great in a genre where all too often characters have ideas that seem completely out of keeping with the setting. I enjoyed it and will continue with the rest of the trilogy. 14. Of Human Bondage (W. Somerset Maugham) Overall this book was great even though I did not like the beginning at all. It opened like a Dickens novel in the worst possible way - being orphaned, the dismal childhood with an uncaring old guardian, the horrible boarding school etc. - it was only afterwards that I found out it was based on Maugham's own childhood, so not just a series of cliches. I stuck with it and it really paid off. While Philip's time abroad is better, for me though, the book got going only after Philip went to London and the focal point becomes Philip's obsession with Mildred. This whole section is fantastic. There is such rawness and honesty in the description of Philip's self-loathing and self-disgust. He debases himself appallingly before Mildred and all the while I wanted him to get a grip though I knew it was impossible. You not only made to feel Philip's horror and disgust but that there was no alternative; he could not do otherwise. My interest waned a bit as everything fell into place for what I thought was a contrived ending - though in keeping with the Dickensian opening - nonetheless this book is wonderful, the description of Philip's obsessive "love" is just so brutal. 15. I, Claudius (Robert Graves) More historical fiction, this time detailing the power struggles of Julio-Claudian dynasty in Rome as told from the perspective of Emperor Claudius. Just how many inconvenient family members and senators must die? Entertaining and informative from start to finish. I'm not sure what to read next. Anyone like to suggest a wildcard?
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Mar 31, 2015 19:59
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Blind Sally posted:Michael Herr's Dispatches: http://www.amazon.com/Dispatches-Michael-Herr/dp/0679735259/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1427828487&sr=8-1&keywords=dispatches+michael+herr Thanks! Sounds really interesting.
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Mar 31, 2015 21:03
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^^ I think it's up to you whether you count one book for multiple categories. 1. The vanilla read a set number of books in a year. [19/52] 4. Philosophy 5. History 6. An essay 7. A collection of poetry 9. Something absurdist 10. The Blind Owl (Free translation if your ok with reading on a screen or cant find a copy!) 13. Something dealing with the unreal 17. A play 18. Biography 19. The color red 21. Short story(s) 22. A mystery A slow month for me, but a few great books. 16. Half a King (Joe Abercrombie) A decent fantasy novel. I didn't like it as much as the First Law trilogy. 17. We need to talk about Kevin Lionel Shriver) Eva writes letters to her husband Franklin about their son Kevin, two years after he committed a mass murder at his high school. For me this was a difficult read, but worth it. It started off very slowly with Eva writing about the time leading up to Kevin's birth. She is insistent that there is something abnormal about Kevin from the moment he is born, which is very strange, but then Eva can't be objective about anything to do with Kevin. The real question here is was Kevin born "evil" or was it his upbringing that made him so. How harshly should we judge Eva? 18. Cold Comfort Farm (Stella Gibbons) Obviously it is satirical of a certain kind of early 20th century rural romance and so the plot consists of suitably ridiculous episodes and coincidences, but as well as that has completely out of place references to video telephones (and yet people still use telegrams too) and jaunting about in aeroplanes. Bizarre. 19. Dispatches (Michael Herr) Michael Herr was a war correspondent in Vietnam for Esquire magazine. Dispatches is a vivid description of various episodes of his time there as he travels around the country talking to the "grunts" and ends up in altogether insane situations. Indescribable for me.
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May 4, 2015 13:56
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1. The vanilla read a set number of books in a year. [28/52] 4. Philosophy 5. History 7. A collection of poetry 9. Something absurdist 10. The Blind Owl (Free translation if your ok with reading on a screen or cant find a copy!) 13. Something dealing with the unreal 18. Biography 21. Short story(s) 22. A mystery 20. A Place Called Winter (Patrick Gale) A man in Edwardian England is disgraced and forced to by his family to go to Canada or be exposed. This was ok. 21. Essays (George Orwell) As the title suggests, a collection of essays by George Orwell. The essays cover literary criticism, schoolboy memoirs and of course politics. For me the best was "Notes on Nationalism", I had not thought about nationalism is the context presented, i.e. allegience to a particular political viewpoint etc., which to me was an interesting idea. Probably the most famous essay in the book is "Politics and the English Language", the point which came across most strongly to me was how usage of ready made phrases stiffles thought and makes people incapable of expressing themselves precisely. The examples used were very much the sort of language, completely stripped of actual meaning, which is pervasive in a modern corporate writing. 22. The Girl With All The Gifts (M.R. Carey) This was an interesting take on the post-apocalyptic zombie genre. A young girl is held in a remote military installation with no memory of the time before she got there. To her horror she realises that the nice teacher would in fact be quite tasty, and everything only gets worse from there. 23. The Silver Tassie (Sean O'Casey) About a group of soldiers before, during and immediately after WWI. It seemed pretty good to me, although I don't think I have the imagination necessary to read plays well. I would need to see if performed to have a proper opinion. 24. Red Rising (Pierce Brown) A young miner Darrow (this name was almost stupid enough to put me off) living inside Mars discovers his whole life is a lie and seeks vengence on the ruling Golds by becoming one of them. I enjoyed it enough to read the next book in the trilogy. 25.Golden Son (Pierce Brown) Darrow is well entrenched serving a powerful martian Gold family when everything starts to go wrong. This ends on a complete cliffhanger which makes sense for the second of a trilogy, but is annoying to read. The final book is not yet out though and I wish I had waited until it was complete. 26. Revelation Space (Alastair Reynolds) Good sci-fi. I had no idea what the plot was going in, I bought the ebook and didn't read the blurb. Going in blind having worked pretty well for me, this book just dumps you in at the deep-end anyway and leaves it up to you to figure the bigger picture. I will definitely read some more in this series, but I don't want to get burned out on it so will leave it for a while. 27. Necessary Lies (Diane Chamberlain) A young social worker in 1960s South Carolina finds out about a state run eugenics programme which sterilises people without consent. She learns that one her teenage clients is to be forcibly sterilised and tries to save her. I thought the ending was a bit forced, but nonetheless a good look the horrible social attitudes of the early 1960s. 28. Trainspotting (Irvine Welsh) The lives of a group of addicts and their associates in Edinburgh, written in dialect. The chapters vary in how loosely and tightly they are related to one another and some are in first person and others in third. Each of the characters in the first person chapters has a very distinct voice, so it's easy to tell whose viewpoint you are reading. This was fun to read.
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May 31, 2015 17:54
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I haven't been reading much and really neglected keeping up-to-date. Now it's hard to remember details of some of these! 1. The vanilla read a set number of books in a year. [36/52] 4. Philosophy 5. History 7. A collection of poetry 10. The Blind Owl (Free translation if your ok with reading on a screen or cant find a copy!) 13. Something dealing with the unreal 18. Biography 22. A mystery 29. Fatherland (Robert Harris) This was reasonably entertaining from what I remember. The POV character is a dissatisfied police detective in an imagined 1960s Nazi Germany. While investigating the murder of a party official he uncovers disturbing truths about what events which occurred during WWII putting his own life in jeopardy. 30. Black Like Me (John Howard Griffin) A white man passes himself as a black man and travels around the depth south in the late 1950s. This book was both interesting and disturbing, the sense of menace and danger when he travelled into Alabama was particularly visceral. 31. Sword of Destiny (Andrzej Sapkowski) I read this in preparation for playing The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt. This book is a loosely related set of short stories. I would recommend if you are interested in The Witcher Universe. 32. Blood Song (Anthony Ryan) This was a reread, since I remembered liking it and had planned to read the series now that it is complete. I was surprised just how little I remembered of the book, especially the formulaic training section. Didn't like it as much this time, but was still entertaining. 33. Player of Games (Iain M. Banks) This is a paperback which I've had sitting around for perhaps 5 years, I picked it up after reading Consider Phlebas. I started it back then, but did not like the opening at all. I still don't like the opening, but once it got going, which for me was when the Game was introduced, it was a great book. 34. Use of Weapons (Iain M. Banks) Another book in The Culture series. This one has an unusual structure. It skips between passages covering current events and past events. I don't want to spoil anything, great book. Comment related to the ending: Even after the chapter where Zakalwe shoots himself in the head, I didn't quite figure out what was going on. Almost as slow as Sma! 35. The Outsider (Albert Camus) This was surprising. Merseault seems so passive and uninvolved in his own life. This was bleak but strangely comforting. 36. The Shadow Child (Judith Lennox) On the eve of WWI, Alix is holidaying in France with family and loses her two year old cousin Charlie. This deals primarily with two topics, firstly there is Alix's guilt over the disappearance and later the mystery of what happened to Charlie. An enjoyable light read but the ending does tie things up too neatly with a ridiculous coincidence.
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Aug 11, 2015 14:09
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Things have been a bit busy over the last couple of months, moved to a new city and started a new job. I have been reading but not keeping up to date with my thoughts on what I’ve read (which was one of the main reasons for doing the reading challenge in the first place) and now forgotten a lot of what happened in these books.  1. The vanilla read a set number of books in a year. [46/52] 4. Philosophy 5. History 7. A collection of poetry 18. Biography 37. World War Z (Max Brooks) I liked the reportage style used for this and it kept me interest. Zombies as a concept have terrified me since I was a kid but I made it through this ok. 38. A Colossal Failure of Common Sense (Lawrence G. McDonald with Patrick Robinson) Story of a guy who was working at Lehman Brothers when things went pear shaped. Wasn’t great, didn’t like the voice used and everyone he directly worked with was always the smartest and saw everything coming and it was the evil boss that did it etc., just too black and white. 39. The Throwaway Children (Diney Costello) Two young sisters lose their father in WWII, their mother marries a man who doesn’t want them around so she hands them over to the state. They get shipped off to Australia by the authorities and things only get worse from there. Was interesting enough for this type of book. 40. The Color Purple (Alice Walker) I saw the film years ago and since I no longer remembered what happened decided to pick up the book. I’ve forgotten a lot of the details already again (read this in September). 41. Perfume: The Story of a Murderer (Patrick Sueskind) Another book I saw as a film years ago. Great book. I often get bored by books with lots of description but not in this case. Certainly I felt equal parts sympathetic and repulsed by Grenouille, gets you very much into his worldview. 42. The City & the City (China Mieville) A murder-mystery taking place in two cities which occupy the same location. The story begins with a dead woman found in the first city and the detective assigned to the case. Things quickly become complicated, involving cross-city underground factions and conspiracies about the nature of “Breach”, the mysterious authority responsible for maintaining the strict separation of people living in different cities occupying the same space. 43. The Traitor (Seth Dickinson) Starting this book you know it cannot end well, it’s in the title. Baru Commorant is a small child when her home is taken over by and expansive empire with very strict ideas of how the world should be. Baru essentially becomes the protégé for a mysterious “Merchant”, is selected to entire the empire’s administration and sent to another subdued society as the empires representative. The middle section was a good but in some sense fairly conventional fantasy novel structure, which is very much deliberate. Baru is not a typical protagonist and has her own agenda. Even though you have been told her plans broadly, you still don’t want to believe to what lengths she will go to. 44. The Blind Owl (Sadegh Hedeyat) I have no idea exactly what I read in this. Things happen but I have no idea if they’re happening in the world of the book or the mind of the character. 45. Blindsight (Peter Watts) I reread this in preparation for reading the sequel. One thousands of alien ships turn up and take photos of the entire world. A team of augmented humans are sent into space to make contact with these aliens. I still don’t fully understand this book, but has a lot of interesting themes and questions. It’s always nice for aliens to be truly alien. 46. Echopraxia (Peter Watts) The sequel to Blindsight. I understood even less of what was happening in this, but then what else can you expect of a “Baseline”? Not as good as Blindsight for me, Daniel is a less engaging protagonist than Siri and overall less interesting story.
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Nov 8, 2015 14:59
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| # ¿ May 21, 2024 05:20 |
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A very busy year and just about completed the booklord challenge in time.  The challenge was very helpful as a goal to read some new and different books that I otherwise wouldn't have, so thanks to Stravinsky for putting it together. 47. Hanns and Rudolf: The German Jew and the Hunt for the Kommandant of Auschwitz (Thomas Harding) This book was a dual biography of the lives of Rudolf Hoess (the Kommandant) and Hanns Alexander, the man who captured him after WWII. The format with chapters alternating between each individual covering roughly contemporary events in their lives worked well, the pace was good and the subject interesting. 48. Annabel (Kathleen Winter) Set in coastal Labrador in the late 60s, a baby is born of indeterminate gender. The story is about how the individual, family and community come to terms with this over the next 20 years. 49. A History of Western Philosophy (Bertrand Russell) This was a long read and can't say I understand why people are arguing about some of these things, some of it seems to be utterly unknowable though perhaps that is the point. At least I'm not completely ignorant on the subject of philosophy any longer. 50. The Diary of an Ordinary Woman (Margaret Forster) This is fictional novel structured/written like non-fiction. An author collates the lifelong diaries of a (fictional) woman, which cover most of the 20th century, into a book. The “diary” itself is interesting, the voice of the “writer” changes over time in what seems a realistic way. Enjoyable. 51. Lords of Finance (Liaquat Ahamed) A history of economic/monetary policy in the time leading up to the Great Depression, focusing on the dealings of the important central bankers of the time. Surprisingly entertaining. 52. Collected Poems (Patrick Kavanagh) I haven’t looked at poetry since I finished school and the only poet I studied that I liked was Patrick Kavanagh, so picked this up for the challenge. I tried to read this aloud for the most part to appreciate the actual sounds, kind of strange to find yourself thinking in verse after 30 minutes of reading.
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Dec 25, 2015 16:57
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