|
Given that now I have a small child around, I'll be estimating down - I'll aim at 50 to start, though I can probably do up to 75. One challenge I'm going to give to myself has less to do with reading and more to do with buying: I'm going to read only books I've bought already, no purchases until at least June.
|
#
¿
Dec 29, 2015 17:18
|
|
|
|
| # ¿ May 19, 2024 17:24 |
|
|
screenwritersblues posted:Booklord challenge as well? Also, I'm doing this too. I'm only going to buying the 33 1/3 series from the Strand when I go into NYC once a month, so no new books till at least August. Yeah, I'll try to swing the booklord challenge too.
|
|
#
¿
Dec 31, 2015 05:15
|
|
|
January~ 1. The Grapes of Wrath - John Steinbeck A classic for all the right reasons, Grapes of Wrath tells the story of the Joad family, an Oklahoma farming family kicked off their land and forced to travel to California to try to find a living. Steinbeck alternates between the story of the Joads and chapters that take a broader view of the crisis, often veering into editorializing - but it's earned, as the conditions that folks like the Joads faced were downright deplorable. Steinbeck is one of my favorite authors, and though this isn't my favorite of his books, it does give a good reason why I love him. 2. The Mark and The Void - Paul Murray A humorous book about Claude Martingale, a banker who's being stalked by an author - named Paul Murray, at that - who wants to write a book about the banking crisis, with Claude the main character. While international banking might not be the most thrilling subject in the world, the weird humor of the situation as Murray insinuates himself further into his character's life becomes more and more ridiculous. Murray's previous novel, Skippy Dies, is an all-time favorite of mine, and while this doesn't quite match that book's hilarity or pathos, it's a fun read. 3. Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban - J.K. Rowling This is probably the eighth time I've read these books, but this time around I'm reading them aloud to my son (who's currently 3 months old, so he's not exactly absorbing the story). Still, I love these books, and it's an interesting change of pace to be reading this aloud. 4. The Wake - Paul Kingsnorth A truly unique book about Englishmen at the time of William the Conqueror - the protagonist, Buccmaster, is trying to retake England from the French forces that are occupying it and changing its culture for the worse (at least in his eyes). It's a difficult read at first - the entire book, told from Buccmaster's point of view, is written in a dialect of Old English that can be dense and tough to understand, but once you get the hang of it you're really drawn in. Fantastic book, and definitely The Best Book of the Month. 5. Gumption: Relighting the Torch of Freedom with America's Gutsiest Troublemakers - Nick Offerman If you know Nick Offerman, you've probably got a good idea what this book'll be like. He writes interesting essays about Americans he admires - from Washington and Franklin and Douglass to Yoko Ono, Michael Pollan, and Willie Nelson - and for the most part it's a pretty entertaining read. 6. Assassin’s Quest (Farseer Trilogy #3) - Robin Hobb I read the Farseer trilogy a long time back - I think probably high school or middle school - and decided to revisit it recently. It's a much more personal and less fantastical type of fantasy than I'm used to - lots of court intrigue, not much magic until near the end, and it's all told from the POV of one character, so it's a smaller scale than something like ASOIAF. It doesn't hesitate to get depressing and dark, either. While this wasn't my favorite fantasy series, it was a nice change of pace from other entries in the genre. I plan to read most of the rest of Hobb's books set in this world - there are over 15 so far - and that's a project I'm willing to undertake. 7. Moby Dick - Herman Melville A classic I haven't read since undergrad, Moby Dick was a challenge to take on - mostly because almost a third of the book is Melville/Ishmael telling you everything that is known about the whale at the time of publishing, and it can get somewhat dry, though with clever metaphors and insights scattered throughout. There's not much plot, but the characters like Ahab, Stubb, Starbuck, and Queequeg are fantastic - Ahab gives astounding speeches, and Stubb often keeps the mood from getting too dour - and the final chase of the whale in the last few pages is gripping as hell. 8. Wild Swans: Three Daughters of China - Jung Chang An interesting memoir about the writer's family - focusing mostly on her grandmother, her mother, and herself - in China over the course of most of the 20th century, through the rise of Communism and the rule of Mao. I'd been curious about things like the Great Leap Forward and the Cultural Revolution, and this book showed very well their effects on a single family. Very good read if you're interested in recent history that doesn't get a whole lot of attention. 1) Vanilla Number (8/52) 2) Something written by a woman (Rowling, Hobb, Chang) 3) Something Written by a nonwhite author (Chang) 4) Something written in the 1800s - Moby Dick 5) Something History Related - Wild Swans 6) A book about or narrated by an animal - Moby Dick 7) A collection of essays. - Gumption 8) A work of Science Fiction 9) Something written by a musician 10) Read a long book, something over 500 pages - Moby Dick, The Grapes of Wrath, Assassin's Quest 11) Read something about or set in NYC 12) Read Airplane fiction (Patterson, ect) 13) Read Something YA - Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban 14) Wildcard! 15) Something recently published - The Mark and the Void (March 2015) 16) That one book you’ve wanted to read for a while now. 17) The First book in a series 18) A biography or autobiography - WIld Swans 19) Read something from the lost generation (Fitzgerald, Hemmingway, ect.) or from the Beat Generation 20) Read a banned book - The Grapes of Wrath 21) A Short Story collection 22) It’s a Mystery. I also just realized I never posted my December books in the last thread, but oh well, I shouldn't dig it up just for that reason.
|
|
#
¿
Jan 29, 2016 23:59
|
|
|
February~ 9. Our Band Could Be Your Life: Scenes from the American Indie Underground 1981-1991 - Michael Azerrad A really interesting look at some of the bands that never made a huge radio splash in the 80s, but had untold influence on the music of the 90s. I've discovered some good new bands, learned things about bands I already liked, and laughed when the Butthole Surfers put their balls on Jimmy Carter's suitcase. A good read. 10. Kindred - Octavia Butler An excellent time-travel story about an African-American woman who goes back in time to the era of slavery, meeting her ancestors - including a slave and the slaveowner. While the idea might seem kind of trite - lord knows there are plenty of "I traveled in time to meet my ancestors" stories - it's told with a keen understanding of the attitudes of the time. A very good introduction to Butler, who I'll definitely be reading more of. 11. Warlock - Oakley Hall One hell of a Western - and an intellectual one at that. I've jokingly called it "Middlemarch in the Wild West" - but there are some similarities. Sure, it's not a bucolic English town - it's a rough town in the Wild West - but it still incorporates the views of all walks of life in this town, from the sleazy saloon owners to the imperfectly moral lawmen to the roustabouts that make the town dangerous. It also has a lot to say about life on the fringe of civilization, and is a gripping Western showdown in its own right. Definitely my Best Book of the Month. 12. Faithful Place (Dublin Murder Squad #3) - Tana French Tana French's Dublin Murder Squad is a pretty solid series of mysteries, each following a different detective on a different case. This one, in which Frank Mackey returns to his home to investigate the disappearance of his teenage love, is not the best I've read so far - that would go to the second, The Likeness - but it definitely intrigued me and kept me reading. 13. The Black Count: Glory, Revolution, Betrayal, and the Real Count of Monte Cristo - Tom Reiss File this under "things I didn't know" - Alexandre Dumas's father was half-black and one of the leading generals of the French Revolution, a contemporary and rival of Bonaparte with an amazing life. A pretty solid biography, though much of it dwelt on the French Revolution rather than Dumas itself. Most interesting was the focus on how this massive social upheaval affected people of color, such as Dumas's dad. 14. Changes (Dresden Files #12) - Jim Butcher The Dresden Files are just plain fun, and this one topped them all in terms of bringing 11 books of world-building into a satisfying climactic confrontation. Pretty much all of my favorite characters - Dresden's allies and enemies - make an appearance, and the stakes are, once again, raised higher than they've ever been. Possibly my favorite book of the series. 15. The Power and the Glory - Graham Greene Rereading for the first time, I found this one less gripping than some of Greene's other works. He has a deft hand at investigating the moral ambiguities of men in desperate straits, and the whisky priest on the run from the law is one of his most sympathetic - and pathetic - creations. 1) Vanilla Number (15/52) 2) Something written by a woman (Butler, French) 3) Something Written by a nonwhite author (Butler) 4) 5) Something History Related - The Black Count 6) 7) 8) A work of Science Fiction 9) Something written by a musician - Our Band Could Be Your Life 10) Read a long book, something over 500 pages 11) Read something about or set in NYC 12) Read Airplane fiction (Patterson, ect) 13) Read Something YA 14) Wildcard! 15) 16) That one book you’ve wanted to read for a while now 17) The First book in a series 18) A biography or autobiography - The Black Count 19) Read something from the lost generation (Fitzgerald, Hemmingway, ect.) or from the Beat Generation 20) Read a banned book 21) A Short Story collection 22) It’s a Mystery. - Faithful Place I'm also making my way, albeit slowly, through War and Peace. Hope to finish that in March so I can tackle some other longer books. Chamberk fucked around with this message at 07:11 on Mar 3, 2016 |
|
#
¿
Mar 3, 2016 04:24
|
|
|
The Berzerker posted:I plan to read this in March, I finished The Likeness in February (which I agree was the best so far, of what I've read). Would you say Faithful Place is better than Into the Woods or worse? I'd say it's a bit better than in the Woods but I liked that one too. Frank's family reminds me of Cassie's gang in The Likeness, and while it's a bit of a slow starter, it gets a lot more interesting about halfway through. I plan to read Broken Harbor and Secret Place sometime later this year, I like French's style, even if it is getting a bit predictable this far in the series. Oh yeah, could someone Wildcard me?
|
|
#
¿
Mar 3, 2016 07:34
|
|
|
March! (a little bit late...) 16. Last Exit to Brooklyn - Hubert Selby Jr. This was... extremely hosed up. Consisting of several interrelated stories, Last Exit to Brooklyn tells the tales of the underclass of Brooklyn - the whores, the queens, the addicts - and does not spare a single detail. It's incredibly well-written (great stream-of-consciousness type stuff) but seems to revel in the filthy and sordid, to the point that I felt a need for a shower after certain sections. It was really quite good, but incredibly repellent at times... which, I suppose, means it left an impression, which is more than I can say for some books I've read this month. 17. War & Peace - Leo Tolstoy A second time through the Russian epic for me, and I loved it still. It follows several dozen characters - and about four or five main characters - through the years of Napoleon's war on Russia. It deals equally well with the epic scope of the conflict and the inner landscapes of the characters, and proves how masterful Tolstoy could be. 18. Ship of Magic (Liveship Traders #1) - Robin Hobb Having finished the first Farseer trilogy, I continued my trek through Hobb's work into her pirate trilogy, the Liveship Traders. I dig a lot of it - the pirates, the talking/thinking ships, the serpents, the politics - though Hobb has a propensity to make her villains a little TOO villainous. Still, I appreciate the wider scope that these books take over the singular first-person narration of the Farseer books, and she’s created quite an interesting world with intriguing mysteries. 19. Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire - J.K. Rowling Man, these longer Harry Potter books take a while to get through when you read them aloud! The five-month-old baby seems to like them, though. 20. The Hundred Thousand Kingdoms (Inheritance Trilogy #1) - N.K. Jemison I wanted to like this, but in the end it kind of left me cold. An outcast descendent of the royal line is called back to court and into several intrigues, both with her royal relatives and the actual gods that have been enslaved by the royal family. It was a pretty interesting premise, but it seemed like it couldn’t decide whether it wanted to be YA or sexyfantasy and kind of failed at both. 21. Best Served Cold - Joe Abercrombie I've been rereading Joe Abercrombie's books - slowly - and have just gotten to the standalone novels. I feel like this is where Abercrombie’s style really starts to pick up (though you could tell he was improving throughout the First Law trilogy - the third is so much better than the first it’s absurd) and despite its exceptional length the book moves swiftly. Some of his characters in this one lean a little heavily on their quirks, but as far as the brutality, dark humor, and unexpected twists that I expect from Abercrombie go, this one delivers the goods. 22. Flora and Ulysses - Kate DiCamillo A really cute little book about a quiet, gawky comic book enthusiast and the squirrel she meets who has super powers. Definitely written for a young audience, it also tells its stories in a comic book style occasionally. Really cute, not super deep, but good if you’ve got a preteen or a precocious 8 year old you need to buy a book for. 23. A Little Life - Hanya Yanagihara Here is where I started reading "books of the year" of 2015, as you can see from this and most of the following. This one, a huge doorstopper at over 700 pages, is ostensibly about a group of four friends in New York. However, it ends up becoming about one of them, Jude St. Francis - and his traumatic past. While it was very readable, at times it wavered on the edge of either shmaltz or tragedy. 24. Fates and Furies - Lauren Groff Not sure why this one got the hype it did - it tells the tale of a marriage from two points of view, the husband’s and then the wife’s, but it still seemed like “the marital problems of two white people: the book” and never really rose above it. 25. The Tsar of Love and Disco - Anthony Marra I read and loved Marra’s “A Constellation of Vital Phenomena” last year (despite its pretentious title) so I picked up this collection of short stories and found… pretty much the same thing. The themes, locations, and style are all very similar. It’s a bunch of interrelated short stories that span Russia from the early days of heavy Soviet censorship and banishment to the developing oligarchy that it is today, and there are some very coincidental links between the characters and stories so that at the end, it all comes together very well. Again, it seemed like something of a rehash of his first book, but I guess if it works, don’t fix it. 26. The Plot Against America - Philip Roth My first Roth in a long time - read American Pastoral years ago and hated it - and for the most part it was pretty good. Someone else (possibly in this thread?) said it seemed relevant to the political atmosphere of today, what with a charismatic celebrity (in this case, Charles Lindbergh) seizing hold of the Presidency after several racially charged remarks (this time against the Jews). The book veers into some very dramatic events near the end, but perhaps what made it seem so resonant was the atmosphere of dread that hung over the main character (Philip Roth, as a boy, in this alternate historical timeline) and his family. 27. Bats of the Republic - Zachary Thomas Dodson Now this, I liked. Like JJ Abrams’s “S”, Mark Danielewski’s “House of Leaves”, or Garth Risk Hallberg’s “City on Fire,” this book stretches the boundaries of how a book is presented - three tales happening at the same time, one telling a story of a dystopian future printed on futuristic paper, one in the journals of a man exploring the republic of Texas in the early 1800s, and one in a fanciful 19th century novel style about the woman the explorer left behind. There are illustrations, guidebooks, clever graphic details that suggest which of these stories is truly real, and an ingeniously contrived letter that may or may not solve the riddle of the whole book. It doesn’t leave you with a conclusive ending, but I think it may entice me to return to the book sometime later to try to puzzle it out some more. Through sheer creative flair, this one definitely gets my Book of the Month. 1) Vanilla Number (27/52) 2) Something written by a woman (Hobb, Rowling, Jemison, DiCamillo, Yanagihara, Groff) 3) Something Written by a nonwhite author (Yanagihara) 4) Something written in the 1800s - War and Peace 5) Something History Related - War and Peace 6) A book about or narrated by an animal - Flora and Ulysses 7) 8) A work of Science Fiction - Bats of the Republic (sorta) 9) 10) Read a long book, something over 500 pages - A Little Life, Best Served Cold, War and Peace, Ship of Magic, Goblet of Fire 11) Read something about or set in NYC - Last Exit to Brooklyn, A Little Life, Fates and Furies 12) Read Airplane fiction (Patterson, ect) 13) Read Something YA - Flora and Ulysses 14) Wildcard! 15) Something recently published -A Little Life, Fates and Furies, Bats of the Republic, and Tsar of Love and Techno 16) That one book you’ve wanted to read for a while now 17) The First book in a series: The Hundred Thousand Kingdoms, Ship of Magic 18) 19) Read something from the lost generation (Fitzgerald, Hemmingway, ect.) or from the Beat Generation 20) Read a banned book - Last Exit to Brooklyn 21) A Short Story collection - The Tsar of Love and Techno 22)
|
|
#
¿
Apr 8, 2016 22:40
|
|
|
April~ 28. My Brilliant Friend (Neapolitan Novels #1) - Elena Ferrante 29. Mad Ship (Liveship Traders #2) - Robin Hobb 30. The Rum Diary - Hunter S. Thompson 31. The Story of a New Name (Neapolitan Novels #2) - Elena Ferrante 32. Ubik - Philip K. Dick 33. Those Who Leave and Those Who Stay (Neapolitan Novels #3) - Elena Ferrante 34. The Sellout - Paul Beatty 35. Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix - J.K. Rowling Rather than recapping each book (since many of them are parts of series that I'm still wrapping up) I'll just go with a general update. The Elena Ferrante novels are tremendously addictive, and very good, even if I can't articulate why I'm loving this story of a female friendship over decades in Italy. The Liveship Traders books are fun pirate novels with a fantasy twist, which I read a while back but decided to revisit in order to move on to Hobb's Tawny Man trilogy. The Sellout was a hilariously dark book about race in America, filled with moments of "holy poo poo, did he actually say that?!" Ubik was likely the best book of the month, a surreal science fiction novel about psychics, time manipulation, and what awaits us after death - I know there have been plenty of science fiction stories more or less directly inspired by this one. Finally, The Rum Diary was not quite what I expected from Thompson; it felt like his attempt to rewrite The Sun Also Rises, in Puerto Rico instead of Spain. 1) Vanilla Number (35/52) 2) Something written by a woman (Hobb, Rowling, Ferrante) 3) Something Written by a nonwhite author (Beatty) 4) 5) 6) 7) 8) A work of Science Fiction - Ubik 9) 10) Read a long book, something over 500 pages - Order of the Phoenix, Mad Ship 11) 12) Read Airplane fiction (Patterson, ect) 13) 14) Wildcard! 15) 16) That one book you’ve wanted to read for a while now 17) The First book in a series: My Brilliant Friend 18) 19) Read something from the lost generation (Fitzgerald, Hemmingway, ect.) or from the Beat Generation 20) 21) 22)
|
|
#
¿
May 1, 2016 22:23
|
|
|
MAY!!! 36. Ship of Destiny (Liveship Traders #3) - Robin Hobb In my year-long project to read more Hobb, this has been a fun one to revisit. While the Farseer Trilogy tended to be a little melancholy - and had a pretty weak ending - this remained fun throughout, and wrapped up well. It’s not your usual fantasy - there’s dragons and talking ships and pirates and the like - and worth a read. 37. The Story of the Lost Child (Neapolitan Novels #4) - Elena Ferrante I didn’t dig too deep into these books in my previous reviews, so let me just say now - I loved them. Granted, I finished this one near the beginning of the month, so it’s not as fresh in my mind, but it ended the series on a high note, being my favorite of the four. I can’t say I expected a series about the lifelong friendship/hateship of two women to be so compelling, but man, it so very much was. Fantastic. 38. Ancillary Justice - Ann Leckie An interesting sci-fi political thriller of sorts; while I can see why people might love it, I merely ended up liking it. The premise was pretty interesting, but I just couldn’t get invested in the characters or the plot. Still, kinda glad this won the Hugo, for all it must have pissed off certain puppies to have a winner that refers to all of its protagonists as “she” regardless of gender. 39. A Distant Mirror - Barbara Tuchman Whoo, this one took me a bit. I started it back in March and have been inching my way through it ever since. It’s a combination biography/history sort of deal, describing the 14th century as it related to the life of one of its more notable noblemen, Enguarrand de Coucy. It was loaded with historical detail, and could occasionally be very interesting - as when it talked about the Black Plague or the Papal Schism - and occasionally very dull. (Not to mention occasionally hard to follow - there were about 4 Philips and 7 Charleses to keep track of!) An impressive book, somewhat outside my reading comfort zone, so I’m glad I persisted through. 40. The City & The City - China Mieville Mieville is a good writer, and with this book he’s cut back on his signature bloat - it checks in at a mere 300 pages - but it still falls under that “have a REALLY COOL idea, come up with a compelling plot about halfway through” curse that I see in most of his books. Still, as someone who has taken up reading mysteries a little more often, it was fun to see a surreal version of one as done by a guy with cool ideas. 41. Midnight’s Children - Salman Rushdie When he’s on his game, Salman Rushdie is a goddamn literary genius. Like, sentence-for-sentence, I can’t think of a writer I enjoy more. It’s a magic realist sort of book, with its narrator Saleem Sinai as a symbol of his country of India. After all, he was born at midnight on the first day of India’s independence, as were a thousand others, and all of them have been granted mysterious powers. (Saleem’s has to do with his nose.) There are domestic dramas alongside political struggles and sectarian wars, yet it all seems to twine together perfectly together. It certainly owes a debt to other great magical realist books - The Tin Drum and 100 Years of Solitude for sure - but manages, in my mind, to establish itself in their lofty company. 42. The Land Breakers - John Ehle Definitely the Best Book of the Month. (At least, among the books I read for the first time.) This follows a group of settlers in an isolated valley in the Appalachian mountains circa 1779, and their attempts to make a life of it on the very edges of civilization. Though it’s heavily loaded with a lot of set-up (here’s how they made their houses, planted their crops, started their herds of livestock, etc.) the characters are vibrant and sympathetic, and their struggles to create a community makes simple things like the hunting of a bear or the driving of cattle over the mountains truly epic. 43. Carrion Comfort - Dan Simmons I like Dan Simmons. I like vampires (even psychic ones). I like globetrotting adventure. But somehow, this just didn’t grip me like I thought it would. See, there are psychic creatures that feed off of others’ suffering, and they control people like pawns, and one of them was a lieutenant-oberst in the Third Reich, and there’s a Holocaust survivor out to get his tormentor… it all sounds really good. But the book was easily twice as long as it had to be, and by the end I was just hoping it would wrap up soon. Shame, because I like a lot of Simmons’s other stuff. 44. Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince - J.K. Rowling Something like my 6th or 7th time through this? Still pretty good. 45. The Fireman - Joe Hill Okay, so Joe’s dad Stephen King obviously had a huge influence on him; this is the younger King generation’s take on The Stand, and Joe Hill acquits himself well in writing his own end-of-the-world plague crisis. (The culprit this time is no superflu, but a skin condition called Dragonscale that causes people to spontaneously combust.) You’ve got your band of survivors - in this case, a community who’s learned to live with the infection, but has to keep a low profile to keep from being killed by cremation squads trying to wipe out those who are sick. 46. Broken Harbor (Dublin Murder Squad #4) - Tana French Recently I’ve been reading quite a few mysteries, and Tana French’s are near the top of the heap. They’re well-written and the detectives themselves are often as interesting as the cases they investigate. Book 4, Broken Harbor is… pretty good! I’m still feeling like the second book, The Likeness, is the best of the lot - even if it took a lot from The Secret History. But this one, about a happy family found dead or dying in a near-deserted housing complex, is solid. 1) Vanilla Number (46/52) 2) Something written by a woman (Hobb, Rowling, Ferrante, Leckie, French, Tuchman) 3) Something Written by a nonwhite author (Rushdie) 4) 5) Something History Related: A Distant Mirror 6) 7) 8) A work of Science Fiction - Ancillary Justice 9) 10) Read a long book, something over 500 pages - Ship of Destiny, Half-Blood Prince, A Distant Mirror, The Fireman, Midnight's Children, Carrion Comfort 11) 12) Read Airplane fiction (Patterson, ect) 13) Read Something YA : Harry Potter 14) Wildcard! 15) Something recently published: The Fireman 16) That one book you’ve wanted to read for a while now: A Distant Mirror 17) The First book in a series: Ancillary Justice 18) 19) Read something from the lost generation (Fitzgerald, Hemmingway, ect.) or from the Beat Generation 20) 21) 22) It’s a Mystery. - Broken Harbor Chamberk fucked around with this message at 00:00 on Jun 6, 2016 |
|
#
¿
Jun 5, 2016 21:30
|
|
|
JUNE and JULY! Kind of fell behind a bit on posting here, but I did do a lot of reading over the summer! 47. The Last Picture Show - Larry McMurtry It turns out life in small-town Texas is sad. That’s about it. It’s well-written enough, but a pretty minor work compared to Lonesome Dove. 48. The Heroes - Joe Abercrombie I like Joe Abercrombie, and this is probably his best. Rather than taking a long view, this book spans only 3 days during which a great battle is fought. We see the carnage from both sides, from generals and grunts alike. I like the spin-off novels set in the First Law world more than the original trilogy - which is probably just a result of his becoming a better writer as he goes along. 49. Bands of Mourning (Mistborn #6) - Brandon Sanderson Quantity isn’t always quality. This guy mass-produces fantasy books, some of which are really enjoyable. I liked the first Mistborn trilogy and am legitimately excited about upcoming Stormlight Archives… but this one was a miss. Like the one before it, it is enjoyable in PARTS - and his sense of humor has gotten a little better. I dunno. I like Wayne. But the plot is nothing to shout about and when I got to the end and saw that there’d be a fourth book in the series… I wasn’t one hundred percent thrilled. 50. The Sport of Kings - C.E. Morgan I enjoyed parts of this but felt it ended up overwritten. It’s about a rich family in Kentucky trying to breed the perfect horse and the young man who works there who’s descended from some of their ancestors’ slaves. There was a decent story in there and some good writing and I guess I learned some about horses. 51. VALIS - Philip K. Dick This was… well… interesting. Having read The Man in the High Castle and Ubik, I had enjoyed them as interesting sci-fi with some slightly kooky ideas. This was much more heavily on the kooky side, with about half of it dedicated to the main character’s strange philosophical treatises. Based on this, I can see where some of PKD’s reputation comes from. 52. Dune - Frank Herbert A classic for a reason. I’ve read this a few times back in the day, and I got decently far in the sequels in middle school. (I doubt I’ll finish the series to the extent I did back then.) But that first book… is really quite good. Space politics, giant worms, addictive substances that give you insight into the future - what’s not to like? 53. The Secret Place (Dublin Murder Squad #5) - Tana French One of my favorite of the Dublin Murder Squad series, this one investigates a murder of a young man on the grounds of a fancy all-girls’ school in Dublin. There’s the case as seen through the eyes of the investigator, and in a perspective not found in any of the other Murder Squad books, flashbacks to the girls who have become embroiled in this mess. It was good to see Frank Mackey from Broken Harbor/The Likeness come back, he was fun. Her sixth book is coming out in fall, and I’m a legit fan by now. 54. Dinner at Deviant’s Palace - Tim Powers One of Tim Powers’ first books, it deviates somewhat from the norm in that it’s fairly sci-fi. (Postapocalyptic, funny new names for places that used to be U.S. cities, ya know.) But as post-apocalyptic books go, it’s not bad. A musician heads into the depths of a cult to try to save his old love (echoes of the Orpheus myth mixed with some out-there science fiction - works pretty well if you ask me!) 55. The Red Magician - Lisa Goldstein This was… hm. It was short. It was on sale for like 2 bucks on the Kindle store. And it got a National Book Award. I figured I’d give it a shot. As far as magic realism set during the Holocaust goes? Not bad, I suppose. 56. Post Office - Charles Bukowski And the man’s work matches his reputation. It’s lurid, but strangely funny and readable at the same time. It just follows a deadbeat-ish fella as he works a great deal of his life in the somewhat intolerable workplace of the title. (I don’t know much about Bukowski beyond his reputation - I assume this might be autobiographical to an extent?) JULY 57. Alexander Hamilton - Ron Chernow An excellent biography. I’ll admit, I’m one of those folks who has listened to the Hamilton soundtrack a decent bit, and figured I’d get some info on the Founding Fathers that wasn’t as musical-theater-ey. While there were a few drab chapters - examining Hamilton’s stance on trade policy - it was an interesting story of a man who stood out in his time. It’s inspired me to get more into biographies - FDR, Napoleon, any other major historical figure, that would be interesting. 58. The Sympathizer - Viet Thanh Nguyen I believe this won the Pulitzer this year? If so, it deserved it - it was smart and funny. It tells the story of a Southern Vietnam army lieutenant who comes to the U.S. with his general after the fall of Saigon. He is, also, a spy for the North Vietnam communists, and his allegiances to the two sides get tangled and mixed up in all sorts of events. 59. Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows - J.K. Rowling Finished my reread to my son. The last few chapters may have gotten me a bit verklempt. In any case, I’ll be reading The Cursed Child soon enough... 60. The Dark is Rising (Dark is Rising Cycle #2) - Susan Cooper I enjoy Susan Cooper’s books because they’re written for young people but don’t pander to them. I started this series a little out of order (see: book 1 finished at the end of this month) but the first two, at least, are somewhat interchangeable. Neat ideas, but hopefully some of them get fleshed out in the following books. 61. The Dead Zone - Stephen King An old King chestnut I hadn’t read since, say, middle school? Plenty of people are making the joke of comparing the candidate in this book to a current candidate, so its relevance convinced me to reread it. While I don’t see much of the connection, this probably has one of King’s best endings to date - a very simple twist that I didn’t remember from my first time through, but that worked quite well. 62. Gould’s Book of Fish - Richard Flanagan What a wild and joyously crazy book. Told from the point of view of a prisoner in Tasmania (before it was known as that), the Book of Fish is arranged around a sort of conceit that each chapter focuses on a fish and then makes thematic connections between the fish and some aspect of human nature/some character. It’s gritty and messy, but also beautifully written and probably the Best Book of Both Months. 63. A Hundred Thousand Worlds - Bob Proehl I know this may seem unlikely, but this is a book about nerddom/conventions that is not bad at all. It follows various characters (an actress who was once on an X-Files-like show, a comic artist, a lesbian comic writer) as they go to conventions from Chicago to L.A. It’s a pretty good look at nerd culture - and he gets a lot of the details right - but at the same time a well-written book with engaging characters and good writing. Don’t read this to celebrate the joy of nerd culture - as it does a pretty decent job skewering the bad parts of it. 64. Red Rising (Red Rising #1) - Pierce Brown This is no doubt going to be made into a movie. It fits all the requisites for a hot property (dystopia, young people killing each other, etc.) but is still pretty good. Or at least very readable. Brown tells the story at a breakneck pace and while there were cliches aplenty - and the story owes a great deal to the Hunger Games - I did find myself interested enough to get the second and third books of the trilogy from the library. 65. Tree of Smoke - Denis Johnson I wanted to like this one more than I did - a 700 page book about Vietnam can be good (see Matterhorn by Marlantes) - but I found this to be a bit of a slog. It follows people in the intelligence community during the years of the Vietnam War - a colonel, his nephew, and two brothers who sign up for tours of duty - and is about as twisting and hard to follow as the war itself. Still, I couldn’t get into this and ended up taking about 6 weeks to finish it. 66. Golden Son (Red Rising #2) - Pierce Brown The second book in this tremendously violent YA dystopia sci-fi raises the stakes considerably, changing from a deadly competition on Mars to a full-on rebellion in space. Loyalties are tested, etc etc. As with the first book, the plot barrels along at a breakneck pace and it’s hard to tell who to trust because everyone’s out for themselves. Sure it is cliched, but if it works, it works. 67. Over Sea, Under Stone (Dark is Rising Cycle #1) - Susan Cooper And then something written for young readers that seems right in that sweet spot of Narnia and its ilk. There’s almost a cozy aspect to this story of three young children in search of an Arthurian artifact, even when there’s danger - you know good will win and evil will fall eventually, but it’s a fun story nonetheless. Looking forward to the rest of the series for sure. 1) Vanilla Number (67/52) 2) Something written by a woman (Cooper, Rowling, Morgan, French, Goldstein) 3) Something Written by a nonwhite author (Viet Thanh Nguyen) 4) 5) Something History Related: Alexander Hamilton 6) 7) 8) A work of Science Fiction: Dune, Dinner at Deviant's Palace, VALIS 9) 10) Read a long book, something over 500 pages: Alexander Hamilton, Tree of Smoke, Deathly Hallows, The Sport of Kings, The Heroes 11) 12) Read Airplane fiction (Patterson, ect) - The Dark Half (eh, I figure Stephen King is sold in airports) 13) Read Something YA : Harry Potter 14) Wildcard! 15) Something recently published: A Hundred Thousand Worlds 16) That one book you’ve wanted to read for a while now: Tree of Smoke 17) The First book in a series: Red Rising, Over Sea Under Stone 18) A biography or autobiography: Alexander Hamilton 19) Read something from the lost generation (Fitzgerald, Hemmingway, ect.) or from the Beat Generation 20) 21) 22) It’s a Mystery. - The Secret Place
|
|
#
¿
Jul 30, 2016 17:06
|
|
|
AUGUST/SEPTEMBER 69. Harry Potter and the Cursed Child - J.K. Rowling & co Well, of course I’d give it a shot, right? There were a few moments that sparked that old fire, but otherwise this seemed a little awkward and not really Harry Potter-esque. I hear it’s amazing to see performed, however. 70. Morning Star (Red Rising #3) - Pierce Brown As a conclusion to the Red Rising trilogy, it worked. I definitely enjoyed the whole series, despite its not-quite-YA tone and similarity to many other YA series. There were a few annoying quirks, but I can’t complain - it kept me reading up past my bedtime several nights, I had favorite characters I was rooting for, and I’m sure once the series gets made into movies (only a matter of time I’m sure) I’ll go see them. 71. Sharp Ends - Joe Abercrombie I’ve been rereading Joe’s books and finally got to this one, released this April, which has several stories set in his fantasy world. Some stories give background on already-established characters or describe what happens on the sidelines of other stories, while another (amusing) series of stories follow a thief and a warrior who find themselves in various scrapes. I get the idea that these stories might set things up for Joe’s upcoming trilogy, but we’ve got a while to wait until that shows up. 72. Wildwood (Wildwood Chronicles #1) - Colin Meloy I’m a pretty big fan of the Decemberists, and I’ve been looking for more YA books to read aloud to my son. (Granted he’s not a year old yet, but the more you read to kids, the better, so I hear.) This was a fun story, if derivative of several other Narnia-esque series. Talking animals, strange kingdoms just outside the reach of modern life… you know the drill. 73. The Goblin Emperor - Katherine Addison I picked this up from the library as I’d heard a decent number of recommendations for this on Goodreads and in the fantasy thread. It was… it was pretty good! I enjoyed it. However, you’ve got to have a LOT of patience for world-building. Like, you’ll have to deal with names that have 8 syllables and a lot of apostrophes, and how a fictional court deals with matters of bureaucracy, to a somewhat ridiculous extent. That said, it does have a compelling plot about court intrigue, and the main character is pretty likeable. Your mileage may vary. 74. Interpreter of Maladies - Jhumpa Lahiri This won the Pulitzer years ago, and I was in the mood for some short stories, so I figured why not? I liked The Namesake years back, so I had nothing to lose. Turns out this was clearly the Best Book of the Month - just gorgeously written with real insight into brief moments of people’s lives. Mostly, there are stories of immigrants - from India to America, mostly - and the disconnect between the lives they expected to live and the lives they do live is exquisitely rendered. 75. Aquarium - David Vann This book really took me by surprise. Given the premise of the story - a young girl meets an old man in an aquarium and strikes up a friendship without telling her mother - I figured I knew the way this story was going. I was dead wrong, and this book led me into the most disturbing and harrowing 50ish pages I’ve read all year. Also, there are lots of pretty pictures of fish. 76. The Dragonbone Chair (Memory, Sorrow, and Thorn #1) - Tad Williams As a continuation of the series is arriving in 2017, I went back to my Absolute Favorite Fantasy Series Of All Time. The first book is a bit of a slow starter (it takes, according to my paperback copy, about 170 pages for the interesting stuff to start) but once it gets going it tells a fantasy story par excellence, with dragons and knights and trolls and magic swords. I feel like this series bridges the gap between Tolkien and Martin - it’s an epic quest like LotR but plays with the intrigue and politics that would become Martin’s strength. Plus, the world feels immersive and realistic - with kingdoms and civilizations that are clever references to civilizations from the real world (one is clearly based on Rome, one on Scotland, one on the Vikings…) I do very much love this series. 77. Greenwitch (The Dark is Rising #3) - Susan Cooper The third book in the Dark is Rising sequence, this book brings together the two stories from the two previous books - Will Stanton on one hand, and the Drew children on the other - and has a little trouble balancing the serious tone of one and the lighter tone of the other. That said, I liked it, and the series does get better. 78. The Underground Railroad - Colson Whitehead Whitehead is one of those authors I’ve always meant to check out, so when this came in at the library I got a copy. Overall, it’s a strongly written story of escape from slavery, including a great deal of ghastly detail and strong characters. Strange, then, that Whitehead (for some reason) made the Underground Railroad literal - an actual series of tracks that travel underground. If you’re going to go magic-realism-ish on me, shouldn’t it contribute to the story? SEPTEMBER 79. The Indifferent Stars Above - Daniel James Brown I’m a sucker for a good historical narrative, and this was a doozy. It tells the story of Sarah Graves, a young pioneer in the 1800s, and the group of families that accompanied her to tragedy. (One of the leaders of the party is named George Donner.) As they met with misfortune after misfortune, bad turns to worse, and the last stretch of the book rivals some horror movies I’ve seen. A fantastic read. 80. Stone of Farewell (Memory, Sorrow & Thorn #2) - Tad Williams THe middle book of my favorite fantasy trilogy does suffer from middle-book syndrome, but (at least to me) it doesn’t sag much. Quite a few chapters from this book would count among my favorite moments of the series. 81. Baudolino - Umberto Eco Upon Umberto Eco’s death earlier this year, I picked up another one of his books. (I had read, and loved, The Name of the Rose.) This one, set in the 1100s, tells the story of Baudolino - a liar who rode with the Emperor Barbossa and went in search of the mysterious Prester John. 82. The Grey King (The Dark is Rising #4) - Susan Cooper Now this one was great. While the other books in this series have been pretty light fare, The Grey King ups the stakes and has some of the most dramatic moments of the entire series. I’m excited to read the last book in the series after finishing this one; although these books are fairly old-fashioned, they’re up there with Harry Potter and the Chronicles of Narnia in terms of brilliant fantasy for young minds. 83. The Nix - Nathan Hill I recommend this with some reservations. I think it is a legitimately good and enjoyable book, with an excellent plot and writing. It reminds me a great deal of Jonathan Franzen when he’s good. THAT SAID, like Franzen, he can seem a little on-the-nose when he talks about ‘big issues today’ or more contemporary topics. The sections about the MMORPG player and the spoiled, entitled student who wants a “safe space” made me wince and soured me on the book some. I still thought this was a very good book, regardless. 84. A Passage to India - E.M. Forster Forster is an interesting card, and as I love to read books about India, I checked this one out at the library in conjunction with Arctic Summer (two books below). This was… alright? Its main theme is that the British are condescending dicks and India is a place they’ll never understand; when a question of a British woman’s honor goes to court, all hell breaks loose and friendships and relationships are strained. Overall, a solid read and pretty advanced view for its time… though not at all perfect by today’s standards. 85. The Marriage Plot - Jeffrey Eugenides A reread. Eugenides is a pretty dang good author, and while I may not have appreciated this book the first time through, I enjoyed it a great deal more this time. In essence, it’s about a love triangle - Madeleine, a privileged Brown English lit grad searching for meaning; Leonard, her boyfriend who has manic depression and a red bandanna; and Mitchell, a religious studies grad who’s in love with Madeleine. Leonard seems awfully similar to David Foster Wallace (and I think he and Eugenides were friends) and the chapter from his perspective seems among some of the best stuff Eugenides has written. 86. Arctic Summer - Damon Galgut This was a sort of biography/novel about E.M. Forster and how he came to write his most famous book, A Passage to India. It explores Forster’s homosexuality and his discomfort with society, whether it’s British, Egyptian, or Indian society. Overall very well-written, though your enjoyment of it may vary with the amount of Forster you’ve read. 87. To Green Angel Tower (Memory, Sorrow & Thorn #3) - Tad Williams The last and longest of Tad Williams’s Memory, Sorrow, and Thorn series is a masterful closing to my favorite fantasy trilogy. It ties together dozens of characters’ fates in a dramatic and exciting climax. The length may be offputting - it’s so long that it had to be put into 2 800-page books when it was published in paperback - but if you’re at this book already you’re pretty committed. Now begins the wait for January, when Williams returns to this world… I can’t wait. 88. Watership Down - Richard Adams An outright classic, this was the next book I chose to read to my son after we finished the Harry Potter series. Rabbits leave their warren to find a new home, and go on an adventure that is more gripping than most human adventures. I like it, and will go on reading it for a long time. 89. The Map of Chaos - Felix J. Palma This is the conclusion to the “Trilogie Victoriana”, or as it’s called in America, the Map of Time Trilogy. It’s a very fun sci-fi series starring, among others, H.G. Wells and Arthur Conan Doyle, and it has aliens, multiverses, and time travel. I especially enjoyed the writing style, which was eloquent without being florid. 90. The Round House - Louise Erdrich A story about a tragedy that befalls a Native American family and how it upends the reservation they live on. Overall, a pretty good book, and a pretty incisive attack on the incredibly poorly run justice system for Native Americans. 1) Vanilla Number (90/52) 2) Something written by a woman: Rowling, Erdrich, Cooper, Lahiri, Addison 3) Something Written by a nonwhite author: Lahiri, Whitehead, Erdrich 4) 5) Something History Related: The Indifferent Stars Above 6) A book about or narrated by an animal: Watership Down 7) 8) A work of Science Fiction: Morning Star, The Map of Chaos 9) Something written by a musician: Wildwood 10) Read a long book, something over 500 pages: The Nix, The Map of Chaos, Wildwood, all 3 Memory Sorrow and Thorn books 11) 12) 13) Read Something YA: Wildwood, Greenwitch/The Grey King, 14) Wildcard! 15) Something recently published: The Underground Railroad, The Nix 16) 17) The First book in a series: The Dragonbone Chair 18) 19) Read something from the lost generation (Fitzgerald, Hemmingway, ect.) or from the Beat Generation 20) 21) A Short Story collection: Interpreter of Maladies 22)
|
|
#
¿
Oct 4, 2016 17:19
|
|
|
October 91. Silver on the Tree - Susan Cooper 92. Girl in Landscape - Jonathan Lethem 93. The Trespasser (Dublin Murder Squad #6) - Tana French 94. Fool’s Errand (Tawny Man #1) - Robin Hobb 95. The Heart is a Lonely Hunter - Carson McCullers 96. Ghost Story (Dresden Files #13) - Jim Butcher 97. Nada the Lily - H. Rider Haggard 98. Golden Fool (Tawny Man #2) - Robin Hobb November 99. Fool’s Fate (Tawny Man #3) - Robin Hobb 100. Manhattan Transfer - John Dos Passos 101. Mindset: the Psychology of Success - Carol Zweck 102. Catch-22 - Joseph Heller 103. Oscar & Lucinda - Peter Carey 104. Swing Time - Zadie Smith 105. Moonglow - Michael Chabon 106. Parable of the Sower - Octavia Butler Parenthood has still given me a decent amount of time to read, but not a whole lot of time to write about what I read, so here's some catching up. I finished my booklord challenge with Manhattan Transfer as my Lost Generation book and Nada the Lily as my wildcard. I really, really liked Nada the Lily - not what I was expecting at all. Here I thought it was some western when it was actually the story of warring tribes in Africa. Other standouts: the Tawny Man trilogy by Robin Hobb was excellent, Catch-22 and Heart is a Lonely Hunter were favorites reread, Swing Time, Moonglow and The Trespasser were new releases from the library that were all pretty good. Probably the best book of all of 'em was the one I finished last night, Parable of the Sower, which followed a young woman as society crumbles around her. (It's already well in the process of doing so as the book starts.) As far as post-apocalyptic fiction goes, this was among some of the best I've read (and that's a pretty crowded genre at the moment) 1) Vanilla Number (106/52) 2) Something written by a woman: Butler, Smith, Zweck, Hobb, McCullers, Cooper, French 3) Something Written by a nonwhite author: Butler, Smith 4) 5) 6) 7) 8) A work of Science Fiction: Parable of the Sower, Girl in Landscape 9) 10) Read a long book, something over 500 pages: all 3 Robin Hobb books 11) Read something about or set in NYC: Manhattan Transfer 12) 13) Read Something YA: Silver on the Tree 14) Wildcard! - Nada the Lily 15) Something recently published: Swing Time, Moonglow, The Trespasser 16) 17) The First book in a series: Fool's Errand 18) 19) Read something from the lost generation (Fitzgerald, Hemmingway, ect.) or from the Beat Generation: Manhattan Transfer 20) 21) A Short Story collection: Interpreter of Maladies 22) It’s a Mystery: The Trespasser
|
|
#
¿
Nov 30, 2016 15:39
|
|
|
|
| # ¿ May 19, 2024 17:24 |
|
|
December 107. Parable of the Talents - Octavia Butler 108. The Lost Time Accidents - John Wray 109. Butcher’s Crossing - John Williams 110. The Botany of Desire - Michael Pollan 111. The Association of Small Bombs - Karan Mahajan 112. Lud-in-the-Mist - Hope Mirrlees 113. A Christmas Carol - Charles Dickens 114. The Sot-Weed Factor - John Barth 115. A Gambler’s Anatomy - Jonathan Lethem 116. The Hobbit - J.R.R. Tolkien 117. The Hotel New Hampshire - John Irving 118. The Fellowship of the Ring (LOTR #1) - J.R.R. Tolkien Finished the year with 118 out of my original goal of 52. Reread some good ones - Christmas Carol and started LOTR - and read some... interesting new ones. The Sot-Weed Factor was a bawdy 700-page American take on Candide, and The Hotel New Hampshire was vintage Irving. (Weird family with incest issues? Check. Bear? Check. Random sojourn to Europe? Check.) The Association of Small Bombs was a pretty good, short book about terrorists and their victims, and Lud-in-the-Mist was a neat pre-Tolkien fairy tale. Finally, Parable of the Talents was probably the Best Book of the Month, continuing the story of Parable of the Sower's small community based around a new religion in the midst of a post-collapse America. A good year of reading!
|
|
#
¿
Jan 5, 2017 07:54
|
|