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I forgot to update my progress in the last thread for the past couple months, but I won't make that mistake again! I'm taking a hefty swing at the Stravinsky Challenge. I usually aim for a book a week, but I just recently finished going through all the series' I had in my backlog. It's time for some interesting one-offs. So yeah. Stravinsky Challenge with a soft quantity goal of 52, which I of course plan to fill with My Little Pony graphic novels and Naruto manga. (Does Machiavelli's The Prince count as philosophy? That's been on my pile for a while now)
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Jan 3, 2015 01:34
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First update on the booklord challenge here we goooooo. 1-2. [Published in the Last 3 Months] The Way into Magic and The Way into Darkness by Harry Connolly - These two books are the last two in a trilogy released all at once with kickstarter money funding the publishing costs. Overall, the series was pretty good. The protagonists characters felt strong and realized, and the world was full of fun and interesting ideas. My only problem with the series was that the plot itself felt very rushed. The amount of content and "worldbuilding" was vast and crammed so tightly that there simply wasn't enough page space to devote to a proper amount of idea exploration. So, the plotting was brisk and skimmed constantly past intersting places and, cultures, and elements that should have been more deeply explored. Still a fun read, but a little disappointing to show so little, so often. 3. [History] The Disappearing Spoon by Sam Kean - I was originally just gonna read this to add to the tally, but it turned out to be a pop-sci history of how each element on the periodic table was discovered, and by whom. The stories and science were interesting, but for some reason Sam Kean's style of writing put me off a little. There was an odd mix of narrative flippancy juxtaposed with heavy jargon that made it difficult to determine exactly who this book was for. (Answer: Everyone? As many people as possible?) 4. [Postmodern] The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier & Clay by Michael Chabon - This was on a postmodern reading list, and though I'm not 100% sure it belongs there, I'm using it for mine. I loved this book. I'm a real sucker for multi-layered narratives with strong, consistant themes and Chabon delivered. I find his prose, even in scenes of despair and tragedy, extremely warm and comforting. I'm not sure why this is, but I felt the same during the Yiddish Policemen's Union. Chabon, I find, is also an excellent source of Jewish-American culture and experience, which is not a subject I am often subjected to. 5. [Philosopy] The Prince by Niccolò Machiavelli - I went into this, of course, with preconceptions and expectations. It's not everyone whose name becomes an adjective. I was surprised, however, at how unshocking I found his work to be. Maybe this speaks ill of me, but the notion that deceptive shitheads with good PR departments can be adept at winning and maintaining positions of power did not seem to be a particularily novel idea (even for the time). Machiavelli strikes me as a man of keen observational skills and an ability to separate the moral behaviour of successful "princes" from the expected moral behaviour of normal men in their personal lives. He never advocates cruelty for it's own sake, but simple declares that cruel or evil behaviour in a "prince" can be more effective than its inverse, provided that such cruelty is never made obvious and clear to onlookers. All in service of a sort of greater good, ends justifying means, can't make an omelet without breaking a few eggs kind of mentality. It's been difficult to get all my thoughts on this compressed into a single mini-review for a forum challenge. I've already spent a few late nights mulling it over in bed. I ended up reading up on Machiavelli interpretations quite a bit, and eventually found: 6. [Essay] A Special Supplement: The Question of Machiavelli by Isaiah Berlin - This essay from the early 70s discusses how a single work could result in such a wide variety of interpretations from such a large number of respected philosophers. It helped immensely in firming up what I'd just read, and clarifying the nuance in interpretations of Machiavelli's work. http://www.nybooks.com/articles/archives/1971/nov/04/a-special-supplement-the-question-of-machiavelli/
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Jan 23, 2015 09:28
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I've been reading alot, but haven't updated my list in a long-rear end time. Any intense thoughts and feelings about each book I read have probably mellowed out some and become relatively bland. Generally speaking, I've had a pretty good time. 7. [Biography] Bossypants by Tiny Fey. It shouldn't come as a surprise that an autobiography by a famous comedy writer would end up being pretty funny. I kinda wish there was more of it, as it didn't dig particularily deep. 8. [The Blind Owl] The Blind Owl by Sadegh Hedayat. Kudos, Booklord. I liked this short story (novelette?) a great deal. Well, maybe liked isn't quite the word. Rather, I'd say I appreciated the experience of dual decents into confusion and madness. Very evocative. 9. [Short Stories] Theatre Grottesco by Thomas Ligotti. Less hit-and-miss than most collections, this was a pretty consistant work. I expected horror, dread, and ennui, but never found myself feeling much more than fascination. Fascination is great, though. 10. [Unreal] City of Stairs by Robert Jackson Bennet. The internet seems to be falling over itself to fellate this book. It was pretty great, and a fun read. I found it very reminiscent of Sanderson's Mistborn and McClellan's Powder Mage books, though I'd say it was a bit more thoughtful with the writing, and didn't have Sanderson's RPG Player's Guide mechanical base. It reminded me strongly of another author at the time, as well. I can't remember who. 11. [A Play] Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are Dead by Tom Stoppard. It can be difficult to read a play, but even with that barrier I found this to be quite funny, and extremely clever. 12. [Absurdist] The Man Who Was Thursday: A Nightmare by G.K. Chesterton. Really good, lots about it to think about like why they were all wearing those weird clothese at the end? Seemed kind of mystical/religious probably. (I liked it) 13. [Female Author] The Left Hand of Darkness by Ursula K. Le Guin. I liked this a lot. Interesting sci-fi concept were paired with well realized characters and comfortable prose. Can anyone speak to the quality of the other books in her Hainish Cycle? 14. The Autumn Republic by Brian McClellan was good. All its excitement and adventure was slightly undercut by the cramming of too many unexplored plot points in at the very end. The final section of the novel might have been better served as a book of it's own, allowing the twists and turns and revelations to get some buildup so as to not fall so flat. 15. [Mystery] Foucault's Pendulum by Umberto Eco. I think I'm more impressed by this book as an authorial undertaking than anything else, as I don't think I actually enjoyed it very much. It's extremenly dense and detailed, and I found to to be a slog. The books is composed almost entirely of boring windbags bloviating incessantly at each other, and the mystery plot only really kicks in for the last 150 pages or so of this 700 page behemoth. The book jacket description pretty much only refers to the final 5th of the book, while the rest of the novel is spent wishing the characters would shut the gently caress up. Maybe that was the point. 16. [Non-White] The Three-Body Problem by Cixin Liu was great. A very interesting sci-fi book with heavy focus on the Chinese cultural revolution. My only complaint would be that every character sounds the same and all the dialogue comes across as awful and childish, like a play written by a primary schooler. This might be a result of the translation. 17. [Poetry] The Waste Land and Other Poems by T.S. Eliot. This collection contained poems from three distinct parts of T.S. Eliot's life. I very much enjoyed his early work, and The Waste Land, his later work. His early poems had a strong sense of cynicism and disdain that was powerfully expressed. His middle work I found to be overwraught and composed nearly entirely of references to Dante and Shakespeare, and the message became muddled. 18. [The Colour Red] Rainbows End by Verner Vinge. Why this for the colour red? Because I make my own damned rules, that's why.  This book was ok. Like the Three-Body Problem, the tech and science fiction bits were really interesting, but the characters and dialog were obnoxious. Rainbows end contained precocious sci-fi teenagers and descriptions of augmented reality, which I find irritationg almost every single time. Everyone spoke to each other like they'd recently suffered a brain injury. Every character in the book has to take time out of their day to tell the reader what an rear end in a top hat the protagonist is. He never seems to act all that assholish, and the discrepency is mentally jarring. After reading praise for Verner Vinge's other novels, I expected much more from this. Dissappointing, with some alright tech. For the poetry section I tried reading Motherland Fatherland Homelandsexuals by Patricial Lockwood and ended up putting it down. I found most of the poems to be stream of consciousness word-salad and generally insufferable. Am I bad at reading poetry? Oh. Uh. Somebody Wildcard me up something badass.
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Mar 25, 2015 08:27
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Sometimes it feels like I'm constantly saying "This was a good book" or "I liked this book a lot" when I rate books on Goodreads or post them here. It's tough to get over the insecure feeling that I'm not critical enough and rate things too highly, even though it's probably all confirmation bias as I tend not to finish the books I don't like and generally don't talk about those ones at all. What I'm trying to say was that this was a really good month and I like all books. (Except the bad books gently caress those books) 19. [Wildcard] Oranges Are Not the Only Fruit by Jeanette Winterson. I liked this, and would probably not have picked it up if not wildcarded (as it seems to be a UK school reading list kind of book). This short coming of age story dealt with some really lovely situations and heartbreaking events in a light and comforting tone. Depressing stuff, told with a feeling of hopefulness. 20. [Space] A Fire Upon the Deep by Verner Vinge. After Rainbows End I was left unsure about Verner. Turns out all the praise heaped upon him is likely because of this book, because this one was great. This was a well paced, fun and exciting, space opera/chase movie/first contact novel. Super entertaining, held up by interesting events, interesting tech, and interesting fuedal societies of hosed up psychic rat puppies. The characters dialogue was still fairly undeveloped, but it didn't bother me as much. 21. [Love and Hate] The Annotated Lolita by Vladimir Nabokov was a beautifully written book about, and from the point of veiw of, a poor misunderstood sex offender who gets hardcore seduced by a sexy, sexy preteen. (No, he's a horrible person. This book is fantastic) 22. [Banned/Censored] American Psycho by Bret Easton Ellis continued with my short trend of horrible POV character novels. I loving loved this. I can honestly say I've never read anything quite like it. The slow decent into insanity, starting with one-off sentences of murderous strangness and tumbling like an avalanche into some of the most horrific scenes I've ever read. Shifting from darkly hilarious to appalling as graphic sexual mutilations are described in the same disconnected, obsessive tone as dinner reservations and fashion choices. The chapter on Whitney Houston chilled me to more core and I almost had to put the book down in disgust. The Genesis chunk had me choking back tears and bile. The Huey Lewis and the News debacle should be classified as a war crime. I'm currently wearing black, slim fit jeans by Levis. My socks are black and grey checkered from Calvin Klein. I'm wearing a teal-blue, soft collared, two-button polo by Indian children from The Gap. I just ate a handful of Corn Nuts from Safeway. If this review was a woman it'd be a hardbody like my girlfriend. I came twice while writing this on my Logitech g710+ keyboard with the cherry brown switches (with rubber damping).
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May 1, 2015 11:07
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I haven't updated in a helluva long time, and finished the basic Booklord challenge back around May. drat good Booklord challenge. All hail the Booklord. My final bracket ended up looking like this: 2. [Female author] The Left Hand of Darkness by Ursula K. Le Guin 3. [Non-white author] The Three-Body Problem by Cixin Liu 4. [Philosophy] The Prince by Niccolò Machiavelli 5. [History] The Disappearing Spoon by Sam Kean 6. [Essay] A Special Supplement: The Question of Machiavelli by Isaiah Berlin 7. [Poetry] The Waste Land and Other Poems by T.S. Eliot 8. [Post-modern] The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier & Clay by Michael Chabon 9. [Absurdist] The Man Who Was Thursday: A Nightmare by G.K. Chesterton 10. [The Blind Owl] The Blind Owl by Sadegh Hedayat 11. [Love or Hate] The Annotated Lolita by Vladimir Nabokov 12. [Space] A Fire Upon the Deep by Verner Vinge 13. [Unreal] City of Stairs by Robert Jackson Bennet 14. [Wildcard] Oranges Are Not the Only Fruit by Jeanette Winterson 15. [Recently Published] The Way Into Magic by Harry Connolly 16. [That one book whats been sitting around] Raising Steam by Terry Pratchett 17. [A play] Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are Dead by Tom Stoppard 18. [Biography] Bossypants by Tiny Fey 19. [The colour red] Rainbows End by Verner Vinge 20. [Banned or censored] American Psycho by Bret Easton Ellis 21. [Short storys] Theatre Grottesco by Thomas Ligotti 22. [Mystery] Foucault's Pendulum by Umberto Eco Since then I've pushed my total up to 52. The following descriptions are brief, as this is basically a book dump, and my opinions grew less focused and less grand over the long span of months. 23. Raising Steam by Terry Pratchett was like saying goodbye to an old friend. 24. A Key, and Egg, an Unfortunate Remark by Harry Connolly was interesting pacifist take on urban fantasy, that unfortunately didn't have a whole lot of substance. 25. The Wazir and the Witch by Hugh Cook was a decent, amusing, but forgettable entry in a series I'm working through like a pitch drop. 26-30. The Daniel Faust Series by Craig Shaefer was competently written and a whole lotta fun. I remember irritation at the first book due to it's "Just met now in love with a succubus" urban fantasy bullshit, but it's overall a pretty fun ride. 31-33. The Revelation Space Series by Alastair Reynolds was, overall, pretty good. Some parts were fantastic, but this is where my reading pace took a nosedive as I struggled to get through the third book in the series. So plodding. 34. Chasm City by Alastair Reynolds was great! I liked the standalone novel the most out of the Revelation Space stuff. 35. The Traitor's Blade by Sevastien de Castell was alright. The high praise I read did not translate into the novel, which I found kinda sloppy and trite, though enjoyable. 36. The Annihilation Score by Charles Stross was fine, but my least favorite Laundy File novel. 37. Willful Child by Steven Erikson was a raucous space adventure, lovingly paying homage and taking the piss out of classic Star Trek. Pretty fun. 38 - 41. The Viriconium Series by M. John Harrison was a strange experience. Some of it was fascinating and unique, but a lot of it was a boring slog of language. Harrison felt like the opposite of Jack Vance, with the volume and depth of words blurring the meaning and only providing texture. Maybe that was the point. 42. The Library at Mount Char by Scott Hawkins was awesome, even if it did feel like watching someone else's master plan come together without stakes or danger. 43. The Brothers Cabal by Jonathan L. Howard was fun, charming, and as entertaining as the rest of the series. 44. The Traitor Baru Commorant was probably my favorite "New" book this year, and the second in my trilogy of "Watch a Plan Come Together" novels. Only in this case, the stakes were high and the danger felt real. 45. Dark Intelligence by Neal Asher capped off my trilogy of "I tent my fingers; Everything is falling into place." novels. Pretty good. 46. Futuristic Violence and Fancy Suits by David Wong was another favorite "New" book this year. I love his style of writing, and the mix of horrific violence and brutality with wry irreverance. 47. Gentlemen of the Road by Michael Chabon was a boring picaresque. Chabon is a great writer, and the craft is apparent. I was just bored. 48-49. The Revance Cycle 1 and 2 by Craig Schaefer are low rent Game of Thrones books. They're fine. Competently written, well paced. Nothing special. 50. Shadows of the Self by Brandon Sanderson was alright. The action was fun, but I didn't care about any of the characters. Maybe his writing style has worn thin for me. 51. The Dispossessed by Urlula Le Guin was a good book that I... enjoyed? Very introspective, with a lot of important ideas and thoughts to mull over. 52. I'll Go Home Then, It's Warm And Has Chairs by David Thorne is a snarky book. David Thorne is a funny person. And that's basically my year! Most of the challenge books are read were pretty good. Listing the books from the Booklord challenge that I found fantastic would almost be like writing the whole list out again. I filled my non-challenge slots with a little more fun pulp. That said, The Traitor Baru Cormorant, Chasm City, and Futuristic Violence and Fancy Suits were also loving fantastic. Pretty good year.
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Dec 20, 2015 08:04
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