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I'm in for 52 again this year and might as well do Stravinsky's challenge mode. I do hope we get examples of some of the categories.
ltr fucked around with this message at 18:34 on Jan 2, 2015 |
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Jan 2, 2015 18:30
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| # ¿ May 21, 2024 05:32 |
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1. The Forge of God by Greg Bear 2. The Icarus Hunt by Timothy Zahn 3. Under a Graveyard Sky by John Ringo 4. To Sail a Darkling Sea by John Ringo 5. Islands of Rage and Hope by John Ringo 6. Strands of Sorrow by John Ringo 7. Is Everyone Hanging Out Without Me? by Mindy Kaling 8. Foundation by Isaac Asimov 9. Reach for Infinity edited by Jonathan Strahan 10. The Pride of Chanur by C.J. Cherryh 11. The Importance of Being Earnest by Oscar Wilde 12. The Martian by Andy Weir 13. Invisible Cities by Italo Calvino 14. The Girl With All The Gifts by M.R. Carey 15. Assassin’s Apprentice by Robin Hobb 16. A Personal Matter by Kenzaburo Oe 17. Cibola Burn by James S.a. Corey 18. Atomic Accidents: A History of Nuclear Meltdowns and Disasters: From the Ozark Mountains to Fukushima by James Mahaffey 19. The Water Knife by Paolo Bacigalupi 20. Dr. No by Ian Fleming 21. The End is Nigh edited by John Joseph Adams 22. The End is Now by John Joseph Adams 23. Monster Hunters International by Larry Correia 24. Escaping the Dead by W.J. Lundy 25. A Hanging by George Orwell 1. The vanilla read a set number of books in a year. 25/52 2. 3. 4. Philosophy 5. 6. 7. A collection of poetry 8. 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 12. 13. 14. Wildcard (Some one else taking the challenge will tell you what to read) 15. 16. 17. 18. Biography 19. 20. Something banned or censored 21. 22. A mystery I’ve been bad at updating in this thread but have been reading quite a bit. I have some good progress on keeping up on my reading goal and the extra reading challenge so that is nice. Not going to write about every book, but just some highs and lows. Starting out with the bad, Under a Graveyard Sun and the other three books in the series. Picked it up because it was a zombie book with a different take(main characters flee to the ocean). The first book okay, then it progressively got worse. I think I’l leave it at this, 13 year old super zombie fighter who gets inducted and promoted to a Marine Corp Officer and later drives a pink tank around blaring music to draw zombies in to be killed. Her sister at 15 was at least somewhat more acceptable as a Naval captain of a small boat. Foundation was really good, I think of all the bits, the merchant princes pare was my favorite. I need to read the next two I guess. The Pride of Chanur was fun. I know there are others in the series, but even as a stand alone, it was a good story. The Importance of Being Earnest, I’ve never read a play before and this one was funny, enjoyable and a quick read. Really liked The Martian, looking forward to the movie, from what I’ve seen, they seem to capture the story well in previews. A Personal Matter was tough to get through, but in the scope of expanding my reading, I feel like it was definitely worth reading. The Water Knife was good. My first book by Paolo Bacigalupi and now I want to read his previous stuff. I picked up Dr. No and some other Bond books a few years ago on sale. And at this point I’m done reading any more. I’ve come to realize that the Bond of the books is quite incompetent. The only way he can take care of the problem is to get captured then something happens and he wins. Monster Hunters International, I picked up for free. It was okay if you just skip the gun porn sections and don’t mind being blasted with anything and everything the author can come up with. Could have used some parts cut/leave some of the mystery about the Shacklefords in.
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Jun 26, 2015 23:02
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quote:1. The Forge of God by Greg Bear 27. The Spirit Thief(Eli Monpress #1) by Rachel Aaron 28. Norwegian Wood by Haruki Murakami 29. Murder on the Orient Express by Agatha Christie 30. Beacon 23 Parts 1 and 2 by Hugh Howey 31. The Life-Changing Magic of Tidying Up by Marie Kondo 32. Foundation and Empire by Isaac Asimov 33. Life, The Universe and Everything by Douglas Adams July Update, going to try to write more in my reviews and update on a regular basis for the rest of the year. First up is Revelation Space. Being dropped into 3 separate stories across two worlds and a ship all light years apart made the first 1/3 of the book a bit tough to start. Once things started coming together and I started understanding some of the tech/terminology that was presented. Followed the story along really well even though some of more science stuff like the black hole and neutron stars explanation had me a little lost, even with my greater than average knowledge of space. But in the end I did like the book and will be picking up the others in the series. I guess The Spirit Thief is compared to The Lies of Locke Lamora in it’s description. Aside from being fantasy and having a thief as a main character, they felt completely different. The Spirit Thief is a much much lighter, straightforward story. I liked it and was nice to read something light after Revelation Space. I guess I bought the omnibus so I’ll finish off the others in the series later. Norwegian Wood was my selection for a book about love or hate in the booklord challenge. I had little to go on about the book other than the introduction blurb on Amazon. It’s hard to explain what I liked about it, but I thought it was quite good. Probably one of my favorite books I've read this year. I chose Murder on the Orient Express as the mystery selection for the challenge. I could have chosen a sci-fi or fantasy mystery but thought I would pick something different and out of my comfort zone. While it was quite straightforward (murder, investigation, conclusion) I did enjoy it. I don’t know if I would reading more mysteries like this, but that is more because of so many other books to read and so little time, but it was worthwhile to read at least one. I think Beacon 23 is a new set of short stories by Hugh Howey that at the end will combine to be a full length novel. So far #1, 2 and 3 have been released. I liked #1 more than #2 and have but not read #3. The stories revolve around an unnamed protagonist living alone on a beacon to guide FTL ships through a dangerous asteroid field and something happens. At only 20 to 30 pages each they are quick reads, but fun enough to keep reading as they are released. The Life-Changing Magic of Tidying Up is my selection for philosophy. I’m not real familiar with Zen philosophy before reading this book so I am just guessing based on it’s Amazon categories that this book applies for philosophy and I think I picked up at least a little bit of Zen philosophy in the process. The basic idea is that tidying up your living space will make everything much better in your life. Remove things that do not bring joy, don’t pack away a bunch of stuff that you may one day use(you never will use it), treating your belongings with respect. I guess it makes a bit of sense, maybe? Some of the techniques the book uses to tidy are strange like emptying your purse/backpack every day and putting stuff away until the next day. But others are more normal like using empty shoe boxes as organizers in your drawers. In an effort to finish/advance further in some of the series that I have read only one or two of I picked up Foundation and Empire. It begins about 100 years after Foundation and it was good. Not quite as good as Foundation, but definitely good. As it is 300 years since the start of Foundation, the themes of a declining and failing empire are definitely obvious. I liked the merchant princes part of Foundation the most so continuing with the traders(either Foundation or independent) was interesting to me. I guess the consensus is to read the first three so one more to go! Booklord Challenge 1. The vanilla read a set number of books in a year. 33/52 2. 3. 4. 5. 6. 7. A collection of poetry 8. 9. 10. The Blind Owl (Free translation if your ok with reading on a screen or cant find a copy!) 11. 12. 13. 14. Wildcard (Some one else taking the challenge will tell you what to read) 15. 16. 17. 18. Biography 19. 20. Something banned or censored 21. 22.
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Aug 6, 2015 18:09
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quote:1. The Forge of God by Greg Bear 34. The Spirit Rebellion (The Legend of Eli Monpress, #2) by Rachel Aaron 35. Beacon 23 parts 3,4, and 5 by Hugh Howey 36. The Remaining: Allegiance (The Remaining #5) by D.J. Molles August Update: Things kind of fell apart in August. Picked up another new class to teach which meant my two 13 hour flights went from reading time to class prep time. Still got through a couple books, but would have preferred more and something in the booklord challenge would have been good as well. I liked The Spirit Rebellion, more world building, a little more backstory plus mystery. I think the heist was a bit background to expanding the world and setting up the next book(maybe?). It was good enough that I will get to the next in the series sometime. I feel like the first story of Beacon 23 was the best, but all five parts were good. Finally our lone beacon operator gets some company, stuff happens some people die and an okay conclusion for a series of short stories that could have probably used something more added to it. Last book of August, The Remaining: Allegiance is book 5 of I guess a 6 book series. Since the author got a publishing deal in the middle of writing the series and it took extra time for this book to come out, I kind of forgot most of what happened in the previous books. So I spent the first 1/4 of the book trying to remember details of who was who, and what was going on. While there is action, it was really much more of a set up for the final book in the series. It was good and a lot better than much of the "zombie" books out there so I'll finish the series off later this year. Next up, I'm taking a swing at a few of the booklore challenges I have left. To that end, someone want to throw me a wildcard? Preferably available for the Kindle. Booklord Challenge 1. The vanilla read a set number of books in a year. 36/52 2. 3. 4. 5. 6. 7. A collection of poetry 8. 9. 10. The Blind Owl (Free translation if your ok with reading on a screen or cant find a copy!) 11. 12. 13. 14. Wildcard (Some one else taking the challenge will tell you what to read) 15. 16. 17. 18. Biography 19. 20. Something banned or censored 21. 22.
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Sep 3, 2015 03:22
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quote:1. The Forge of God by Greg Bear 38. Shakespeare: The World as Stage by Bill Bryson 39. The Dead Lands by Benjamin Percy 40. Nemesis Games(The Expanse #5) by James S.A. Corey 41. The Warrior’s Apprentice by Lois McMaster Bujold 42. Black Sun Rising by C.S. Friedman 43. The Traitor Baru Cormorant by Seth Dickenson 44. The Remaining: Extinction by D.J. Molles September update: Doing a bit better in the reading department. First up was my choice of a banned(or at least challenged book), The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn. I’ll make a confession, somehow I got through all of elementary, high-school and college with never reading Mark Twain. I can see why many consider this book to be the first great American novel. It gives a snapshot of America, particularly along the Mississippi in good detail. I thought the section with the con artists went on a little long but overall it was pretty good. I can also see why so many people object to the book. While I understand that the book is is anti-racist and was written in a time that the words were in common use, the amount of times the N-word is used it staggering. Next is Shakespeare: The World as Stage. I had little knowledge of Shakespeare before starting this book, and apparently the world knows about him as well. I needed a biography and I’ve liked other books by the author so I picked this to read. I guess this is not a run of the mill biography, first we know little of Shakespeare from written accounts, even the picture we know as him, may not actually be him! So this book took almost more of a sketch of what he should have been like based on what we know of where he was and the social history of the time. I thought the first bits were really good along with some of the reasons why other scholars are wrong about what we know. One it gets to his popular times, I kind of glazed over a bit because it started analyzing what he may or may not have written, patterns in play, etc… It ended well talking about his death, what we can extrapolate from his will, what happened with his plays after he died and why we have so many of his plays(and why there are many different versions of the same plays). It was good, short and I learned quite a lot about someone and a time period I knew little of. The Dead Lands was recommended several times here. I liked it while reading, but after some thought, I like it less. The good, post apocalyptic travel story(retelling of the Lewis and Clark expedition). It had action, was relatively fast paced, ended okay. The bad, I did not like the whole evolution with powers, magic, whatever you want to call it. It felt really shoehorned in and nearly every instance that the powers were used, there could have been a better non-power way to accomplish the same thing. Even in the acknowledgements the author mentions the clunky magic system, and that is really what it seemed like. I think it would have been better dropping that storyline, using the two missing rangers briefly mentioned as a hook to travel and expand a bit on the experience traveling a wild world. Finally caught up to the most recent Expanse book, Nemesis Games. I liked #3, #4 was okay, but this one was great. I liked that the alien stuff was not front and center like in previous books. It was a plot point in the book but not much new information at all. It was nice to get some backstory and time away from Holden for Alex, Amos and Naomi. Even with their connections to now all three rulers of the major factions, I thought it still felt small scale. Each character had their own problems and were not solved by calling in a favor and everything is fixed. Looking forward to #6 sometime next year I guess. The Warrior’s Apprentice. Just Great! Will read more very soon, but a few other books to get through first. My wildcard was Black Sun Rising. It was okay, I felt like it could have been about 1/3 shorter and been a tighter, better story. I also had some issues with the basics of why these people went on this journey. The priest meets an “adept” who he falls in love with in a matter of days. Said adept loses her powers so he and others(for equally odd reasons) go off on a journey to restore her powers. Reminded me of the goon with the printer story. The reveal of who Tarrant was did not surprise me at all. Once they got to the Rahklands, I liked it better with them overcoming problems during their travels. The way they beat the big bad guy was just so so. The Traitor Baru Cormorant was good. Got a little confusing in the second half of the book with all the names of different dukes and duchesses, but it was good overall. Finished up The Remaining series with The Remaining: Extinction. It was pretty solid all around. Some gripes abut the last book though. The final book does not wrap everything up, just the story of the horde of creatures coming down from the north. Would have been nice to have more closure on the story of the western states and their “President” vs the abandoned eastern states. Also the epilogue was pretty cringeworthy. I know these kinds of books cater to more politically conservative people, but this series had gone a long way without blatant politics. Then the end bit about not supporting the “president” and supporting the idea of America did not really flow with the rest of the book. I would still recommend it for post-apocalyptic series, just stop at the epilogue in book 6. Booklord Challenge 1. The vanilla read a set number of books in a year. 44/52 2. 3. 4. 5. 6. 7. A collection of poetry 8. 9. 10. The Blind Owl (Free translation if your ok with reading on a screen or cant find a copy!) 11. 12. 13. 14. 15. 16. 17. 18. 19. 20. 21. 22.
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Sep 30, 2015 17:48
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quote:1. The Forge of God by Greg Bear 46. Red Rising by Pierce Brown 47. The Complete Poetry of Edgar Allen Poe by Edgar Allen Poe 48. The End of The World As We Knew It by Nick Cole 49. The Spirit Eater (Eli Monpress #3) by Rachel Aaron 50. The End has Come edited by John Joseph Adams October update! The Long Way to a Small Angry Planet was really good. A small group of people on a tunneling(wormhole) ship get hired to travel to a planet to connect it to the rest of the galaxy. Character driven story, not a lot of fighting action, stuff happens related to members of the ship at each stop along the way. Some human/alien and human/AI romance stuff, but doesn’t get graphic. Looking forward to the sequel whenever it is finished I have seen The Hunger Games, but never read any of the books or similar stories so Red Rising was new for me. Again this was really good. The protagonist makes mistakes along the way seems to learn from them and grows. The story is all from the viewpoint of Darrow, and sometimes I think his train of thought was to foreshadowing in some ways but it was still enjoyable. I guess the second book switches up to space opera so looking forward to it. My poetry selection was The Complete Poetry of Edgar Allen Poe. I don’t know why I picked it, but I did. Except for some of his more famous work, it was quite difficult to get through. I think some of that comes down to my lack of knowledge about poetry and how old the writing is so I feel I did not get a lot out of it. I should have picked something more contemporary, but what is done is done. I really like reading stuff by Nick Cole. It’s not too heavy reading, it’s just solid writing about end of world stuff so I picked up his newest, The End of the World As We Knew It. This was another good one. It’s a historical view of a zombie apocalypse through three artifacts left over and analyzed much later, a voice recorder, a notebook and a newspaper article. His books are on the short side, but still wrapped up a good story without really leaving anything hanging. Finished up my Eli Monpress Omnibus with The Spirit Eater. Still fun reads, this one is a bit different, no heist just story and a lot of world building going on. In addition to the Bandit King focuse, the League of Storms, demons, and Benehime all get pages devoted to them and more information about who they are and what they do is presented. I don’t know if I’ll get to the last two in the series this year, but definitely early next year I will be finishing the series. The End has Come is the final book in a series of short stories. As it has been a long time since I read the first two in the series and we are looking at many short stories, I was lost on the background of many stories. Some of them I remembered(Nod, the mold stories, the Howey Wool connected ones, the child aliens) but others were not familiar. If I had either a quick 1 paragraph reminder before the story or read all three books back to back, I think it would have been better. There was enough good to make it a worthwhile read, but next time I attempt a series of short stories like this, I will approach it differently. Finishing up my challenge and the booklord challenge with The Three Body Problem and The Blind Owl in the next week or so! Booklord Challenge 1. The vanilla read a set number of books in a year. 50/52 2. 3. 4. 5. 6. 7. 8. 9. 10. The Blind Owl (Free translation if your ok with reading on a screen or cant find a copy!) 11. 12. 13. 14. 15. 16. 17. 18. 19. 20. 21. 22.
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Nov 1, 2015 02:00
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| # ¿ May 21, 2024 05:32 |
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quote:1. The Forge of God by Greg Bear 51. The Blind Owl by Sadegh Hedayat 52. The Three Body Problem by Liu Cixin With that I am done with my challenge for this year. The Blind Owl was tough, I still don't really know what I read. I'm just going to chalk it up to being way over my head and leave it at that. The Three Body Problem was a good, big idea kind of Sci-Fi. Like other books I enjoyed, I don't have a lot to say about it. Looking forward to next years book challenge! See you in the next thread! Booklord Challenge 1. 2. 3. 4. 5. 6. 7. 8. 9. 10. 11. 12. 13. 14. 15. 16. 17. 18. 19. 20. 21. 22.
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Dec 9, 2015 04:05
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