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Safety Biscuits posted:Wildcard me droogs The Fishermen by Chigozie Obioma.
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Aug 10, 2017 11:31
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Safety Biscuits posted:Wildcard me droogs I'll offer you one, but feel free to turn me down. Zorba the Greek by Nikos Kazantzakis was a very good book. Go along with Zorba while he drinks, works, dances, womanizes, jams out some tunes, philosophizes, and drinks some more!
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Aug 17, 2017 02:07
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USMC_Karl posted:I'll offer you one, but feel free to turn me down. I've already bought The Fishermen, but I'll keep an eye open for this one, too.
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Aug 17, 2017 22:19
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Any chance I could jump in late? I had been reading pretty regularly this year but I've fallen off quite a bit this summer and want to bounce back before the year's end. So far I'm at 27 books read, but I think 42 by December 31 is an achievable goal. I've been reading a lot of non-fiction as of late, and have been moving towards shorter works (150 pages or less). I've also been working in business books as a way of complementing my more left-wing readings. I want to try to tackle a couple meatier books and work in a few more novels or short story collections. A quick list of where I'm at so far: 1. No Place to Hide: Edward Snowden, the NSA, and the U.S. Surveillance State by Glenn Greenwald 2. A Brief History of Neoliberalism by David Harvey 3. High-Hanging Fruit: Build Something Great by Going Where No One Else Will by Mark Rampolla 4. Diamonds Are Forever by Ian Fleming 5. This Machine Kills Secrets: How WikiLeakers, Cypherpunks, and Hacktivists Aim to Free the World's Information by Andy Greenberg 6. Tampa by Alissa Nutting 7. Capitalist Realism: Is There No Alternative? by Mark Fisher 8. Shock Treatment by Karen Finley 9. Brave New World Revisited by Aldous Huxley 10. Billy Lynn's Long Halftime Walk by Ben Fountain 11. 33 1/3: In the Aeroplane Over the Sea by Kim Cooper 12. Why the Germans? Why the Jews?: Envy, Race Hatred, and the Prehistory of the Holocaust by Götz Aly 13. On Violence by Hannah Arendt 14. Our Revolution by Bernie Sanders 15. Rules for Radicals by Saul Alinsky 16. Zero to One: Notes on Startups, or How to Build the Future by Peter Thiel 17. Different: Escaping the Competitive Herd by Youngme Moon 18. Generations: The History of America's Future, 1584 to 2069 by William Strauss & Neil Howe 19. Who's Afraid of the Black Blocs?: Anarchy in Action around the World by Francis Dupuis-Déri 20. The World Made Meme: Public Conversations and Participatory Media by Ryan M. Milner 21. Neoreaction: A Basilisk by Philip Sandifer 22. Dog Whistle Politics: How Coded Racial Appeals Have Reinvented Racism and Wrecked the Middle Class by Ian Haney-Lopez 23. Expensive People by Joyce Carol Oates 24. Kill All Normies: Online Culture Wars from 4chan and Tumblr to Trump and the Alt-Right by Angela Nagle 25. literally show me a healthy person by Darcie Wilder 26. American Hardcore: A Tribal History by Steven Blush 27. The Twenty Days of Turin by Giorgio De Maria
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Aug 18, 2017 00:02
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Safety Biscuits posted:I've already bought The Fishermen, but I'll keep an eye open for this one, too. Yikes, I guess I didn't realize that a week had passed between your request and my answer. My bad.
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Aug 18, 2017 01:53
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June - 7: The Queue (Basma Abdel Aziz) The Lottery and Other Stories (Shirley Jackson) Strange Weather in Tokyo (Hiromi Kawakami) Reaching for the Skies (Ivan Rendall) Purge (Sofi Oksanen) October (China Mieville) A Horse Walks Into a Bar (David Grossman) July - 5: The First Wife (Paulina Chiziane) Wilt (Tom Sharpe) Porterhouse Blue (Tom Sharpe) Flesh-coloured Dominoes (Zigmunds Skujins) Today We Die a Little: Emil Zatopek (Richard Askwith) Missed a couple of months of updates. The Lottery is a really good collection. The title story is very famous and lives up to its reputation, but everything else in here is solid as well - I particularly liked After You, My Dear Alphonse and Flower Garden. October is a cool narrative history of the Russian Revolution. I saw China give a talk on it, he's a nice man and battled manfully with dumb audience questions like "how much did the Communist Manifesto matter to the October Revolution?" Wilt is some fun sharp satire of provincial England. Porterhouse Blue was similar for Oxford University, but the early going is heavy because the post-grad character is so, so boring and gets a lot of attention. I was glad to see the back at him after his condom explosion. Today We Die a Little is a great biography of Emil Zatopek. A huge figure in early distance running, who set tons of records and established a lot of techniques which are fundamental to modern training. Later on he was involved in the Prague Spring. opposing the Czech regime, despite being a convinced Communist, and spent much of his later life in exile. An interesting character and a massive inspiration. TrixRabbi I'll throw you in to the OP. To date - 50: Booklord: 4-5, 7-13, 16-24 Women: 16/50, 32% Non-white: 15/50, 30% 01. The Ottoman Centuries (Lord Kinross) 12 02. Snow Country (Yasunari Kawabata) 8 03. Signs Preceding the End of the World (Yuri Herrera) 9 04. Socialism: A Very Short Introduction (Michael Newman) 11 05. Human Acts (Han Kang) 7 06. As Meat Loves Salt (Maria McCann) 17 07. Buddhism: A Very Short Introduction (Damien Keown) 08. The Dog Who Dared to Dream (Sun-Mi Hwang) 24 09. Dirty Havana Trilogy (Pedro Juan Gutierrez) 18 10. Excession (Iain M. Banks) 11. They Who Do Not Grieve (Sia Figiel) 12. Hard Boiled Wonderland and the End of the World (Haruki Murakami) 13. Five Rivers Met on a Wooded Plain (Barney Norris) 23 14. What is not yours is not yours (Helen Oyeyemi) 16 15. The Plague (Albert Camus) 5 16. The Tale of Aypi (Ak Welsapar) 17. Disgrace (J.M. Coetzee) 20 18. Costa Rica: A Traveller's Literary Companion (Barbara Ras) 19. The Norman Conquest (Marc Morris) 20. It Can't Happen Here (Sinclair Lewis) 21. Coin Locker Babies (Ryu Murakami) 10 22. Broken April (Ismail Kadare) 23. If this is a man/The Truce (Primo Levi) 24. The State of Africa: A History of the Continent Since Independence (Martin Meredith) 25. The Circle of Karma (Kunzang Choden) 26. By Night the Mountain Burns (Juan Tomas Avila Laurel) 27. The Year of the Hare (Arto Paasilinna) 28. Goodfellas (Nicholas Pileggi) 13 29. A Cup of Rage (Raduan Nassar) 22 30. The Housekeeper and the Professor (Yoko Ogawa) 31. Moving Pictures (Terry Pratchett) 19 32. Animal: The Autobiography of a Female Body (Sara Pascoe) 33. The Lost Heart of Asia (Colin Thubron) 34. The Ticket that Exploded (William Burroughs) 4 35. I Have a Dream: The Speeches that Changed History (Ferdie Addis) 36. Flow My Tears, The Policeman Said (Philip K. Dick) 37. Fever Dream (Samanta Schweblin) 38. The Haunting of Hill House (Shirley Jackson) 21 39. The Queue (Basma Abdel Aziz) 40. The Lottery and Other Stories (Shirley Jackson) 41. Strange Weather in Tokyo (Hiromi Kawakami) 42. Reaching for the Skies (Ivan Rendall) 43. Purge (Sofi Oksanen) 44. October (China Mieville) 45. A Horse Walks Into a Bar (David Grossman) 46. The First Wife (Paulina Chiziane) 47. Wilt (Tom Sharpe) 48. Porterhouse Blue (Tom Sharpe) 49. Flesh-coloured Dominoes (Zigmunds Skujins) 50. Today We Die a Little: Emil Zatopek (Richard Askwith)
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Aug 20, 2017 14:25
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Hello, I've been lax in posting updates, so here's a big one of everything I've read this year so far. Total: 34/40 Booklord: 4-14, 16, 17, 19-24 Women: 14/34, 41% Non-White: 11/34, 32% 1. Harmony Black, Craig Schaefer - A spin-off of Schaefer's Daniel Faust stories. Fun urban fantasy featuring an FBI agent who also practices witchcraft! 2. Mother Night, Kurt Vonnegut - Read for the BotM Club from January. Really liked Vonnegut's sense of humor. 5 3. Imagined Communities, Benedict Anderson - Pretty hardcore examination of nationalism. Very enjoyable, though over my head at times. 11 4. 1984, George Orwell - Neat dystopian book bogged down by Orwell's apparent hatred of women. 19 5. Death's End, Cixin Liu - I found it to be a lot longer than it should have been. Enough ideas to sustain several novels/novellas, mashed into one giant mess. 9 6. Kindred, Octavia Butler - Pretty amazing read. I really messed up waiting so long to read Octavia Butler. 8 7. March, Book One, John Lewis - Awesome graphic biography of a living legend. Counting the three books as, well, three books. 13 8. The Obelisk Gate, N. K. Jemisin - With a smaller scope and a narrowed focus, this sequel would have fallen flat were it not for all the amazing character moments within. 7 9. Eichmann in Jerusalem, Hannah Arendt - A less funny counterpart to Mother Night. Worth it for the phrase "banality of evil" and so much more. 12 10. March, Book Two, John Lewis - A bit better all around than Book One, art especially. Some creative panel work. Lewis's retelling of sit-ins was riveting. 11. Red Knight Falling, Craig Schaefer - A much better outing for Harmony Black. The premise of the story (a satellite possessed by space ghosts) is cool and reminiscent of the X-Files. Perfect for magic using FBI agents. 12. March, Book Three, John Lewis - The finale for John Lewis's March series is compelling and incredibly relevant. There were a lot of little bits that get overshadowed that I thought Lewis really helped bring to life in the book. 13. Oblivion, David Foster Wallace - I've put Infinite Jest on a pedestal, but have always been wary of reading DFW's other stuff. A lot of really dense stuff DFW was known for. Worth it for Good Old Neon alone, probably, but the other stuff is nice as well. 16 14. Shards of Honor, Lois McMaster Bujold - Been recommended the Vorkosigan series a hundred times, but only this year did I give it a try. Didn't really go for it, but I've heard the series gets better. 20 15. The Goblin Emperor, Katherine Addison - Loved this, some feel-good, low-conflict fantasy. Easy to get engrossed in and quite a satisfying ending. Maia is a half-goblin, half-elf, that's non-human enough, right? 24 16. Nabokov's Favorite Word is Mauve, Ben Blatt - A series of interesting essays on word choice, cliches, book covers, and more from a data analysis perspective. Fun, but not very deep. 17. Letters from the Dust bowl, Caroline Henderson - Lovely collection of letters from an endearing homesteader. Was lent to me by a coworker and I didn't expect much from it, but it blew me away. Very sad towards the end, but a great look at a unique life. 18. Poems, Emily Dickinson - A kind of poorly put together collection, but Dickinson's poems speak for themselves. I had read her greatest hits and was happy to get a much fuller idea of her body of work. 14 19. The Scar, China Miéville - Kind of flabby, but stuffed with interesting ideas. Uther Doul is the real centerpoint. I wanted to like Bellis, but never quite got there. Good, but not as engrossing as Perdido Street Station. 17 20. The Sympathizer, Viet Thanh Nguyen - Absolutely fantastic. A well-needed Vietnamese perspective on the Vietnam war. 6 21. The Dream-Quest of Vellitt Boe, Kij Johnson - Would have liked this a lot more if I were up on my Cthulhu mythos. Still pretty entertaining. 22. One of Us, Åsne Seierstad - gently caress Anders Breivik. Seierstad offers a look into the mind of a mass murderer without getting too sensationalist. Very thorough, very depressing. 22 23. Pride and Prejudice, Jane Austen - I have a tough time getting into classics. Obviously, the historical relevance of this book makes it worth it. Jane Austen is funny as hell. 24. City of Miracles, Robert Jackson Bennett - A bit of a victory lap for Bennett and his Divine Cities trilogy. Some of the favorite characters from books 1 and 2 reappear for a fun jaunt with a nicely satisfying ending. 25. Between the World and Me, Ta-Nehisi Coates - A vital book. Coates's language is powerful and direct and never overstated. 21 26. Star Trek: How Much for Just the Planet?, John M. Ford - A zany Star Trek pastiche with a handful of bad male-gazey bits. The laughs overshadow that stuff, but did sour the book a bit for me. I'm a Star Trek fan so this is something I love (minus the objectification). 23 27. Raven Stratagem, Yoon Ha Lee - Kickass sequel to a surprise favorite milSF book from last year. Devoting less page space to world building allowed for a really unique read. 4 28. A Farewell to Arms - Another classic. Another book where overlooking sexism is necessary to enjoy it. Hemingway makes wine and liquor 3d characters but can't be bothered to do so for his female characters. 12a 29. Star Trek: Dragon's Honor, Kij Johnson and Greg Cox - A real piece of poo poo. I'm hoping all the terrible male-gaze, sexual objectification of the women in this book was Greg Cox and not Kij Johnson. Nothing good about this thing. 30. No is Not Enough, Naomi Klein - Galvanizing stuff. The promise of the title and the spin Klein put on it was quite good. Lots of important stuff about the current political climate in America in a mere 200 pages. 31. Beloved, Toni Morrison - God drat this was an amazing read. Morrison's prose is fantastic and the story she tells is horrifying but necessary. Loved every page. 32. Pachinko, Min Jin Lee - A nihilistic (though not pessimistic) stroll through a few generations of a Korean family. A good look at Japanese occupation of Korea and the kind of lives Koreans had living in Japan. Slow to start, but ultimately rewarding. 10 33. Matter, Iain M. Banks - Sad to be this close to having no more Culture books to read. Banks is a joy, even if this book is 200~ pages too long and wraps itself up with too much haste. 34. As Nature Made Him, John Colapinto - Yikes this was sad. Very interesting, though. Dr. Money was a real shitbag. Would like to read a book with a better (i.e. more current) take on gender identity. I was worried the booklord challenge would be kind of restricting, but I've found it to be rewarding. Hopefully I've got everything tagged correctly and hopefully the books fit the challenges. If Beloved doesn't work for 18 I'll probably give Lolita a try. apophenium fucked around with this message at 15:53 on Aug 22, 2017 |
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Aug 22, 2017 03:36
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Bill Schutt - Cannibalism: A Perfectly Natural History (A relatively interesting look at the history of cannibalism although it spends a lot of time talking about animal cannibalism which is significantly less interesting. Lots of common misconceptions debunked, worth a read.) Ben H Winters - World of Trouble (A solid ending to the trilogy; I still think the first book is the best though.) John Sandford - Extreme Prey (Yeah I got sucked back into reading these from the library after picking one up as an airport read, whoops.) John Sandford - Golden Prey (They're fine though.) Ann Rule - The Stranger Beside Me (This was highly recommended as a true crime read but drat she's a bad writer and it's so very boring. You could cut 1/3 of this and have a good book but instead you have a mediocre rambling mess.) Stephen King - It (Re-read in anticipation of the movie coming out. Still one of my favorite King books.) Roxane Gay - Hunger: A Memoir of (My) Body (Depressing, great, vulnerable and honest.) Riley Sager - Final Girls (I was doing my tally for this and had to look up the author, assuming a woman, and finding that the author is a man who writes under an androgynous pseudonym, probably because these books are marketed towards the Paula Hawkins/Gillian Flynn crowd? Anyway, I liked the concept but the first 2/3 are really slow and dull.) 1) Read some books. Set a number and go hog wild. 34/40 2) Of the books you read this year, make sure at least 20% of them are written by women. 15/8 3) Of the books you read this year, make sure at least 20% of them are written by someone non-white. 5/8 6) Read a book someone else in the thread recommends (a wildcard!) 10) Read something from somewhere you want to travel. 12a) Read something about the First World War. 15) Read a play. 18) Read something which was banned or censored. 19) Read a satire. 23) Read something that you love. 24) Read something from a non-human perspective.
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Aug 22, 2017 04:38
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apophenium posted:Hello, I've been lax in posting updates, so here's a big one of everything I've read this year so far. And also a question. I read Beloved by Toni Morrison and was wondering if it fulfilled the "read a banned book" challenge. I saw that it had been challenged numerous, but never outright banned. Thanks! No ban, no point imo.
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Aug 22, 2017 06:20
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Corrode posted:June - 7: I'm curious what you thought about this one.
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Aug 22, 2017 14:46
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Ben Nevis posted:I'm curious what you thought about this one. Haven't been ignoring you on this sorry. The comedy set premise could have been meaningless but Grossman makes good use out of it, and the interplay between Dovaleh's story, Lazar's memories and what's happening "now" in the comedy club works well. He nails the oral-storytelling style too - lots of repetition and re-covering the same ground from different angles which suddenly reveals an extra key detail, a lot of the jokes are genuinely funny, etc. At its heart it's quite simple and it's basically plotless but the characterisation is great and drives things forward nicely. A Good Book imo.
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Aug 29, 2017 11:47
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quote:1 - The Outsider, by Albert Camus I read five books in August. 41 - Meatspace, by Nikesh Shukla. A story about social media, identity and the struggle to fit in. A failing writer and his laddish brother each encounter their doppelgangers online, and end up meeting them face-to-face, with strange and troubling consequences. The main plot was interesting, and often genuinely unpleasant to read, with a queasy Chris Morris-esque sense of helplessness. There's romance, which is sweet enough, though for me it didn't do enough to flesh out the rest of the book. The last chapter in particular spoiled a cathartic ending with an unexpected twist that I'm not sure if I liked, but in hindsight made some sense. I like the way Shukla writes, and I definitely want to explore more of his stuff, but there was something lacking in this particular book. 42 - You've Been Warned, by James Patterson and Howard Roughan. Wow. I picked this up on the recommendation of the I Don't Even Own A Television podcast, and powered through it in maybe three hours total. It's like a parody of trashy airport thrillers, with all the one-note characters and clichés amplified by an awkward conversational inner monologue and a main character who is easy to despise. Every twenty pages or so I folded down the corner of a page to bookmark where cringeworthy and laughter-inducing passages were. The pacing is atrocious, the "psychological thriller" elements are tepid at best, and the final reveal is one of the most audacious and poorly-executed I've ever seen. This book is terrible and it is a must-read. 43 - The Emperor's Babe, by Bernadine Evaristo. A verse novel (novel in verse?) from the point of view of a young black girl in 3rd-Century Roman Britain. Starting as a child bride and fighting against the restrictions of her society, race and upbringing, she falls in love with the visiting Emperor. She's backed by a couple of friends, who are written with as much character and charm as the rest of the cast. I wasn't expecting there to be a transgender character, let alone such a prominent one, and while she is written rather broadly it was a pleasant surprise to have her be treated with respect by the other protagonists. The poetry itself is at times jokey, at times intense, with the passion and fervour of the main character's teenage emotions. I'd definitely recommend this book as an alternative to standard tales of life in the Roman empire, and it's one of the most interesting and memorable pieces of historical fiction I've encountered. 44 - Giant Days, Vol. 1 by John Allison, Lissa Treiman and Whitney Cogar. Comic series about three young women friends in their first year at university. It's chummy and fun, the dialogue is snappy and endearingly twee. There are a few flights of fancy, though most of the visuals are fairly low-key. Great character art coupled with slightly bland environments, which at least gives the dialogue and character interactions more of the spotlight. I smiled a lot reading this, and will probably check out more of th series. 45 - Physical Resistance: A Hundred Years Of Anti-Fascism, by Dave Hann. A history of anti-fascist action, organisation and conflict in the UK. Densely packed with eyewitness accounts and covering every year from 1924-2011, it's about as comprehensive a work as I could have asked for. Rarely dry or clinical, Hann is able to put human faces on the colunteers and agitators; it's easy to get wrapped up in the personal drama. Each victory fills the reader with satisfaction; each setback evokes frustration and regret. A particularly powerful section is the chapter on volunteers who went to fight against Franco in the Spanish Civil War, and how infighting and abandonment doomed their cause. One thing that struck me reading this was how often history repeated itself, and how many similarities there are between even the earliest anti-fascist struggles and today's antifa. A major theme is the importance of solidarity and putting in the work, on and off the streets, to combat far-right extremism. 1) Read some books. Set a number and go hog wild. Goal: 52 - 45 2) Of the books you read this year, make sure at least 1/3 of them are written by women. - 18 - 2, 4, 8, 9, 10, 11, 12, 18, 19, 20, 23, 24, 25, 32, 35, 38, 40, 43 3) Of the books you read this year, make sure at least 1/3 of them are written by someone non-white. - 17 - 3, 9, 11, 12, 18, 22, 23, 27, 28, 29, 30, 31, 32, 33, 37, 40, 41, 43 6) Read a book someone else in the thread recommends (a wildcard!) - Black Boy - 8) Read something which was published before you were born. - 12a) Read something about the First World War. - 15) Read a play. - 18) Read something which was banned or censored. - 19) Read a satire. 20) Read something about honour. - 22) Read something about one (or more!) of the seven sins. -
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Aug 31, 2017 00:00
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August update. Erstwhile: 1: Revenger by Alastair Reynolds. 2: The Princess Diarist by Carrie Fisher. +1 woman 3: Mother Night by Kurt Vonnegut. 4. Binti by Nnedi Okorafor. + 1 woman, +1 nonwhite 5. Death's End by Liu Cixin. +1 nonwhite 6. Empire Games by Charles Stross. 7. Among Others by Jo Walton. +1 woman 8. We Are Legion (We Are Bob) by Dennis Taylor. 9. Bror din på prærien by Edvard Hoem. +1 Norwegian. 10. The Plague by Albert Camus. 11. Haimennesket by Hans Olav Lahlum. +1 Norwegian. 12. Land ingen har sett by Edvard Hoem. +1 Norwegian. 13. The Fifth Season by N.K. Jemisin.. +1 woman, +1 nonwhite. 14. The Long Cosmos by Stephen Baxter and (allegedly, although I doubt he contributed much to this one) Terry Pratchett. 15. The Dispossessed by Ursula K. LeGuin. +1 woman. 16. Aquarium by David Vann. 17. The Brothers Lionheart by Astrid Lindgren +1 woman. 18. 1001 Natt by Vetle Lid Larssen. +1 Norwegian, +1 nonfiction. 19. After Atlas by Emma Newman. +1 woman. 20. Exodus by Andreas Christensen. 21. Binti: Home by Nnedi Okorafor. +1 woman, +1 nonwhite. 22. Sandstorm by James Rollins. 23. For We Are Many (Bobiverse #2) by Dennis Taylor. 24. The Conference of the Birds by Farid Attar. 25. The Obelisk Gate by N.K. Jemisin. +1 woman, +1 nonwhite. 26. I, Claudius by Robert Graves. 27. Claudius the God by Robert Graves. 28. Salt: A World History by Mark Kurlansky. +1 nonfiction. 29. Huset mellom natt og dag by Ørjan Nordhus Karlssen. +1 Norwegian. 30. The Rise and Fall of D.O.D.O. by Neal Stephenson and Nicole Galland. +1 woman. 31. Min drøm om frihet by Amal Aden. LGBTQ, +1 woman, +1 nonwhite, +1 Norwegian, +1 nonfiction, biography. 32. Ficciones by Jorge Luis Borges. BOTM for July. 33. Predikanten ("The Preacher") by Camilla Läckberg. +1 woman. 34. Steinhoggeren ("The Stonecutter") by Camilla Läckberg. +1 woman. 35. The Guns of August by Barbara Tuchman.+1 woman, +1 nonfiction, First World War. 36. The Delirium Brief by Charles Stross. 37. Ulykkesfuglen by Camilla Läckberg. +1 woman. 38. Sporvekslingsmordet by Hans Olav Lahlum. +1 Norwegian. New: 39. Devil's Due by Taylor Anderson. #12 in the "Destroyermen" series, where a couple of WW2-era USN ships are transported to a weird alternate Earth full of nonhumans and other weird poo poo. The previous few books have shown signs of losing a bit of steam but this time he picks up the pace and actually permanently ends at least one major plot strand. Remains good. 40. The Fishermen by Chigozie Obioma. Childhood and family tragedy in 1990s Nigeria. loving great, doom-laden and grim yet somehow hopeful. +1 nonwhite. Also quite definitely hits the "something about fear" point. 41. All These Worlds by Dennis Taylor. #3 and last in the Bobiverse series; comfort-reading SF for nerds. Enjoyed it but not quite as much as the first two, it largely felt like "okay, time to wrap this up and go home". 42. The Stone Sky by N.K. Jemisin. #3 and last in the "Broken Earth" thingy. Now this was NOT comfort reading, especially for readers who are parents themselves this series is emotionally devastating. Mysteries are explained, sacrifices are made, an ending is reached. Very fine stuff, will remain onboard the Jemisin train. +1 woman, +1 nonwhite. 43. My Life and Hard Times by James Thurber. BOTM for August. Very funny little collection of anecdotes from the author's youth in pre- and mid-WW1 Ohio. Was only vaguely familiar with Thurber before. +1 nonfiction 44. Discovering Scarfolk by Richard Littler. Scarfolk is a fictional English town forever stuck in the 1970s where everything is horrible in a way only possible in the 1970s; there's a Scarfolk Council blog containing loads of satirical public information publications, which also make up much of the content of this book. The rest is a purportedly non-fictional framing story about a family inadvertently trapped in Scarfolk for the whole of the 1970s, or possibly about a failed academic making up the whole story about that family. A very mean-spirited, blackly funny satire of the recent past (and maybe of our present as well). 1) Read some books. Set a number and go hog wild. 44/40 - goal crushed; new stretch goal of 60 books. 2) Of the books you read this year, make sure at least 20% of them are written by women. 16/44 =36% 3) Of the books you read this year, make sure at least 20% of them are written by someone non-white. 8/44 = 18% 11) Read something political. 15) Read a play. 18) Read something which was banned or censored. 20) Read something about honour. 24) Read something from a non-human perspective. Extra: At least 10 Norwegian books (translations don't count) - 7/10 so far At least 5 nonfiction books - 6/5 Read every BOTM (except optionally for ones I've read before) - 8/8 as of August No more than 5 rereads (vs. the vanilla goal, I would count them against specific goals) - 2/5 so far
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Aug 31, 2017 09:11
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I never did any updates, so here's a giant recap of what I read this year. Olio by Tyehimba Jess. It was a bad book of poetry, and I came to that opinion before it won the pulitzer prize, t.y.v.m. The substantial prose interludes (terribly written; you know it’s a bad sign when a poet can’t even write prose) and some ridiculous sonnet gimmicks are the main reasons the book is considered ambitious. Conquest Of The Useless by Werner Herzog. It’s the little journal that he kept during the making of Fitzcarraldo, as featured in My Best Fiend. It has much of the same melodramatic musings that you can see in the documentary Burden Of Dreams, but if you saw that movie and were disappointed that it didn’t actually give you much behind-the-scenes, this book is delightful in that regard. In The Land Of Pain by Alphonse Daudet. I was attracted because I’d never read a translation by Julian Barnes. It’s much better than Daudet’s novels, at least. The Screwtape Letters by C.S. Lewis. It was as dumb as I would expect from C.S. Lewis, and also, I will never read David Foster Wallace. How To Eat To Live by Elijah Muhammad. He says that all food is unhealthy so you should only eat once every three days. Tracts Relating To Caspar Hauser by Earl Stanhope. If you watch The Enigma Of Kaspar Hauser and get curious, this text has everything that you could possibly want to know about the real case, although there is little ‘enigma’ about it. I Really Like Slop!; Waiting Is Not Easy!; My New Friend Is So Fun!; Today I Will Fly!; Should I Share My Ice Cream?; Pigs Make Me Sneeze!; Are You Ready To Play Outside?; My Friend Is Sad by Mo Willems. I like Mo Willems a lot, but I’m not too impressed with Elephant & Piggie. The title and cover are often the best parts of the book. Look! We Have Come Through! by DH Lawrence. These are very lush poems. I enjoyed them. Swann’s Way by Marcel Proust. After finishing it I was pretty impressed, but I wasn’t too adamant about continuing the journey. Months later, though, I find that there are some really marvelous moments that still stick in my mind, and the idea of coming back to Proust soon sounds very agreeable. The Black Swan by Thomas Mann. I enjoyed it for its hilarious moments of bathos, though I think most moments weren’t intentional. Overall it’s a really embarrassing effort to make a female counterpart to Death In Venice, and it’s a sad end to a great oeuvre. Time In Ezra Pound’s Work by William Harmon. For reading literary criticism about Pound, it’s good to start small, and this book works for that. It goes through all his work chronologically, but focusing superficially on the theme of Time. Crossways by W.B. Yeats. His first volume of poetry was, unsurprisingly, bad. Why read it? One Flew Over The Cuckoo’s Nest by Ken Kesey. Don’t make me tell you it’s bad. A Serious Character: The Life Of Ezra Pound by Humphrey Carpenter. Pound is kind of presented in an undignified light from start to finish, and Carpenter clearly doesn’t think that highly of Pound’s poetry, but it’s a very thorough and fast-paced narrative of his whole life. Read it if you want all the Facts. The Doctor Stories by William Carlos Williams. Some incredibly good short stories. Along with some novels I read, I think Williams was (in fact, much) better at prose than poetry. Dubliners by James Joyce. Uneven, I’d say, but showing a lot of promise. In reading most of Joyce’s work this year, I decided that Dubliners shows quite a lot of promise in terms of “content,” whereas Portrait Of The Artist shows promise in “form,” and they come together perfectly in Ulysses. A Portrait Of The Artist As A Young Man by James Joyce. I didn’t really like Portrait Of The Artist at all though. I couldn’t figure out what I was missing so I started to re-read it, but… nah. I see other readers agree that the sermon midway through is miserable, but the rest of the novel excluding chapter 1 seems to me to be written in the exact same manner. It’s so grinding. But, I appreciated the modernist structure. The Crying Of Lot 49 by Thomas Pynchon. Dumbass poo poo. All of the ‘masculine’ ‘quirk’ of Richard Fariña without any of the beauty or nuance. Just a barrage of parodic names and whimsical plots from the pages of a terrible 1960s issue of Mad magazine. The Pickering Manuscript by William Blake. Yes, obviously I read it because there’s the poem in it that’s quoted in Portrait Of The Artist… well, I liked that poem, and I respect Blake’s unique objectives as a poet, but it’s not for me. Othello by William Shakespeare. Not much to say. I read some Shakespeare and I’m like “yep, that is good” A ZBC Of Ezra Pound by Christine Brooke-Rose. I done reviewed it on goodreads, saying that I “felt swept along in Brooke-Rose's enthusiasm, which is rare to find in Pound criticism without accompaniment by excessive apology or defensiveness” Cathay by Ezra Pound. It’s great. I read Arthur Waley’s translation of the confucian odes last year, and some of those poems are translated by Pound in this. That’s where I was affected the most. Since I wasn’t distracted by the historical context, Pound’s own remarkable feeling for rhythm and idiom shone through immediately. Ulysses by James Joyce. I had the time of my life. If you speak English, you can read it. Just read it, loser. James Joyce’s Ulysses by Stuart Gilbert. I stopped in to read this after every episode of Ulysses, just to confirm my understanding of the basic plot. His summaries are very helpful, because they’re essentially provided by Joyce himself. But all critical analysis seemed to be highly suspect, at times laughable and at times repulsive. Ulysses by Hugh Kenner. This is where to go if you want a concise analytical guide through Ulysses that’s actually good. Yoga Bunny by Brian Russo. Some worthless debut picture book. Stuck In The Mud by Jane Clarke. A picture book with ugly illustrations, the worst kind of picture book. Reading Picture Books With Children by Megan Dowd Lambert. This book expounds the ‘whole book technique’ of leading a story-time. I saw some critics of it online bringing up very reasonable points, but in general, I support the idea of teaching kids printing terminology and bringing them to appreciate a book as a piece of art rather than just breezing through the story. At least, I find it very interesting. Sir Gawain And The Green Knight. My edition, the Simon Armitage translation, had the original text on the facing page, which I always love. I had a great time adapting to the old language and discerning the original poetry myself. It is definitely a strange tale. Purgatorio by Dante. I’m a simple guy and I prefer the grotesque, so obviously I had a much better time reading Inferno. But I am still enjoying Robin Kirkpatrick’s translation a lot. It’s not often that you find a verse translation of Dante that you could, should the mood take you, read in one go. Money Galore by Amu Djoleto. A Ghanaian satire full of delightful caricatures and bizarre tragedy. Compagnie by Samuel Beckett. The style is actually pretty accessible, so it’s more apparent than usual that he’s rehashing. Don’t waste your time with Beckett’s late works if they’re accessible. Just go for “Worstward Ho.” Goldfish Ghost by Lemony Snicket. The latest collaborations with Snicket and his wife Lisa Brown — this book and “29 Myths On The Swinster Pharmacy” — have felt extremely uninspired on the writing end. They are much too obviously just vehicles for Lisa Brown’s illustrations, although those are great. Flaubert And Madame Bovary: A Double Portrait by Francis Steegmuller. I’m not really sure why the excerpts from Flaubert’s travel diary in the second part were so ridiculously extensive, but it sucked. The rest, though, was fascinating. The Complete Peanuts: 1950-1952, 1953-1954, 1955-1956, 1957-1958. It seems almost a conspiracy how immediate the shift in the humor was, from the 1950s to 1960, when Schulz added so many idiotic things — Sally Brown, the Great Pumpkin, etc. But these years are a masterpiece of comedic achievement. Just so good. Even in the very early years where they all look weird. Washington: A Life by Ron Chernow. I anticipate reading a biography of every US president. Chernow’s book was as good a place to start as any, I guess. Like a lot of popular biographies, some of the analysis felt hackneyed and overdramatized, but I sure got my Facts. Delicious Facts. Mooncop by Tom Gauld. There are cute parts. It fell a little flat compared to Goliath or what have you. Ezra Pound: Poet, Volume I by A. David Moody. Moody fills you in on sufficient Facts, but mostly uses them to contextualize Pound’s poetical life, which he focuses on very expertly. All your favorite Pound poems are discussed in due time. I want to read how he tackles his criticism of the Cantos in the next volumes. Our Town by Thornton Wilder. As I was writing I nearly mixed up Sherwood Anderson and Thornton Wilder, for some reason. Actually, I know the reason. Literary Essays Of Ezra Pound. It’s every boy’s dream… well, sometimes he lapses too much into essentially listing books and saying “good/bad/good/bad/good.” But he never lapses into the academic non-reality of criticism for criticism’s sake. You get to feel sure that the only reason Pound would force himself to write an essay about a work is because he really, truly wants everyone to read it. You can see that he is legitimately concerned with as many people as possible reading good literature. For someone who loves to repeat that the public are stupid sheep, etc., he works absurdly hard in looking for new ways for people to access Ovid or Homer or Arnaut Daniel or Cavalcanti. Buddenbrooks by Thomas Mann. It was okay, I liked it, but it often felt awkward and uneven, which I guess is expected for a debut novel. It’s pretty devoted to being a realist opus, and Mann is really not a realist. He enjoys having a huge cast of characters, all unique and fully developed no matter how minor, and he enjoys extensive technical descriptions of disease and whatnot. But other than that I don’t think he’s set out for such an ‘archival’ approach to writing, especially the financial details. In any case the Swedish Academy are losers for isolating this book as the reason for his Nobel. Gone ’Til November by Lil Wayne. It’s a book by Lil Wayne, don’t judge me. Lincoln In The Bardo by George Saunders. I guess it was some sort of really silly and really dumb fantasy story. There were a few funny parts, though. Understanding Comics by Scott McCloud. I read this book in third grade and it fascinated me. There were obviously parts I didn’t fully absorb, but I still had a good time. Now, reading it again ages later, I’m still really impressed. I don’t aspire to make comics or read more comics than I do already, but anyone who’s passionate about their art form on an intellectual, analytical level is worth listening to. Dragon Was Terrible by Kelly DiPucchio. A bit too colloquial for my tastes. I also did not like that the dragon goes to church. A Contract With God by Will Eisner. The art flows so incredibly well. I love the cartoony figures, the copious ink, and his restless alterations of the panel format. Legendary Authors And The Clothes They Wore by Terry Newman. Excellent idea for a book, but doesn’t achieve anything close to its full potential. Hamlet by William Shakespeare. That’s a real good play. Hamlet And Oedipus by Ernest Jones. That’s some real wack analysis. The Pound Era by Hugh Kenner. That's some insanely good lit crit, probably the best I'll ever read. P.S. I'm almost done with the challenge, but I need a wildcard. A WILDCARD!
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Aug 31, 2017 21:47
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Bandiet posted:P.S. I'm almost done with the challenge, but I need a wildcard. A WILDCARD!
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Aug 31, 2017 21:56
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18/24 female authors 9/12 non-fiction Animal is really good, interesting and entertaining. Destroying the Joint is less so. But The Fictional Woman is pretty good and made me want to read her fiction (which this is not despite the title). We Could Be Villains was bad (and highly specific to the author) wish-fulfilment fantasy. Curtain was decent, but disappointing in some ways. Full reviews on Goodreads.
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Sep 1, 2017 10:25
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I've been really awful about updating this so I'm just going to post my current booklord state and some thoughts on the new books added to it.pre:1) 96 books, ≥10% nonfiction, ≤25% rereads
73/96 books, 13 nonfiction (18%), 12 rereads (16%)
2) ≥20% by not-men
36 books (49%)
3) I was recently reminded of the existence of Dave Barry and checked out these two collections I hadn't previously read. The first is the usual assortment; the second, a collection of columns specifically about politics around the 2000 elections, closing out with two about 9/11 (which seem shockingly naive and optimistic in retrospect). They were amusing, but not as funny as they were when I was younger, despite getting more of the jokes. 50. Ghost in the Wires by Kevin Mitnick Holy poo poo, this is nonfiction but reads like a goddamn techno-thriller. It was recommended to me as "if you liked The Cuckoo's Egg you should read...", and that recommendation was spot on; I couldn't put it down. I was 9 when all of this was going down and barely cognizant of current events in my home country, let alone in the US, so I missed most of this when it happened. And even with my currently high level of cynicism it was pretty shocking to see the degree to which law enforcement just stopped giving a poo poo about constitutional rights and the due process of law once they decided they wanted to make an example of him. 51. Anabasis by Xenophon The "March of the Ten Thousand", Xenophon's journal of Cyrus the Younger's disastrous campaign for the throne and the subsequent escape from Persia of ~10k Greek mercenaries he brought with him. This has been used as inspiration (or in some cases outright ripped off) by a lot of authors over the years, especially in MilSF, and I figured I should finally give the original a look. It really does read like a journal or a history, not a story; it's a fairly bare recitation of events, which may be useful for historians but means it's not a very engaging read. 57. Blueprint for Armageddon by Dan Carlin Ok, this is technically a podcast, but at 23 hours long the only thing distinguishing it from an audiobook is the somewhat more conversational tone and the fact that there's no text version available. And I find that tone a lot easier to follow in listening than normal audiobooks. This is Carlin's take on WW1, focusing primarily on the western front, but still containing an awful lot of things I never learned in school, including spending the first several hours untangling the causes of the war and the clusterfuck of alliances and agreements originally set up by Bismarck. He also recommends a whole pile of books and authors, some of which I'll likely check out later. 68. The Compleat Angler by Izaak Walton This is completely uninteresting to me as a how-to, since I have no interest in fishing, but is fascinating as a literary artifact. It's still written in modern english, but the style and word choice is completely different from what I'm used to, which is enough to keep me interested even if I don't care about the subject matter. Also, the opening dialogue is...a thing. The book presents itself as a conversation between Piscator (angler), Venator (hunter), and Auceps (falconer), and the first chapter goes like this: PISCATOR: so I'm an angler VENATOR and AUCEPS: lol, fish suck PISCATOR: what's so great about your hobbies then AUCEPS: [a page on why falconry is great] VENATOR: [another page on why hunting is great] PISCATOR: [most of a chapter on why angling is great] AUCEPS: oh look, there's my stop, great talking to you, bye forever VENATOR: i am completely overcome with the glory of fish! please teach me, o great master! PISCATOR: if you insist  The rest of the book is framed as Piscator teaching Venator in the fine art of angling, including some highly questionable asides into ecology in general -- did you know, for example, that some species of pike are born from seaweed, and that some species of frog turn into slime for the winter and spontaneously reconstitute into frogs in the spring? 72. Attack of the 50 Foot Blockchain by David Gerard The first half is about Bitcoin, and it's fascinatingly dumb. The second half is about Etherium and it's so much dumber than I could have imagined. This was an amazing read if you like pointing and laughing at trainwrecks, which cryptocurrencies definitely are.
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Sep 1, 2017 16:16
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Ben Nevis posted:1. A Biographers Tale by AS Byatt There was some good this month, but I have a feeling that a fair few of these I'll look back on next year and think, "Oh, what was that about again?" I had a plan for August but my library was unexpectedly quick. I had a book on hold that probably wasn't coming in until October and somehow everyone finished a lot quicker than expected, so I had to shove it in here somewhere. And I wanted to read the BOTM as well. All in all things didn't go to plan. I finished up a book from somewhere I want to travel (well, I've read a lot of those, but this was explicitly for that challenge). I'm about 3/4 through some poetry, but am sort of spreading it out a little. And I've got my WW1 book waiting on the shelf. 66. The No. 1 Ladies Detective Agency by Alexander McCall Smith - Precious Ramotswe takes her inheritance and founds Botswana's first female run detective agency. She navigates her personal life while solving minor mysteries. This was a pretty fun, light read. I wish the mysteries were more mysterious. "But the case that tugs at her heart, and lands her in danger, is a missing eleven-year-old boy, who may have been snatched by witchdoctors." That bit is surprisingly little of the book. There's a lot of day to day going about her business in Botswana. This might be a fun last gasp of light summer reading for the back to school crowd. 67. The Round House by Louise Erdrich - When Joe's mother is attacked, he has a lot of growing up to do real fast. This reminded me of two books I'd read earlier this year. Growing Up Dead in Texas, where the protagonist untangles how an incident effects his community and Daddy Was a Number Runner, where a similarly young protagonist learns that the world's just stacked against you. If you know or have read anything about judicial matters on tribal land you can see the course of this story shaping up from about page 30. The real story is the dawning realization on Joe and how he and his family on the reservation react. This was good, but definitely grim. 68. Mister Memory by Marcus Sedgwick - A guy with a literally perfect memory kills his wife. When he's immediately remanded to psychiatric care a policeman gets suspicious. And it all happens in turn of the century Paris. This was decent but, ironically, pretty forgettable. 69. Brother's Ruin by Emma Newman - For some reason in Victorian England a group of jackbooted magic users forcibly take unreported magicians on behalf of the Crown. However if they voluntarily report, they get rich. But maybe it's scary if you become a magic user? I dunno. I was disappointed. I liked Planetfall by Newman, but this just fell flat. It's more like the outline of some larger story. Or maybe a flashback from the main character to explain her backstory while she does something else. Except it's its own book and just blah. 70. My Life and Hard Times by James Thurber - BOTM and good fun. A farcical biography of Thurber's childhood with the occasional picture for comedic effect. Like The Egg and I, this suffered some due to a bit of racism. 71. The Essex Serpent by Sarah Petty - In a sleepy town, an old legend awakens and people are frightened by the prospect of the Essex Serpent. Newly widowed Cora is an avid fossil hunter and thrilled at the prospect of finding a living fossil. The local reverend is sure it's nothing and tries to quieten his flock amid all the superstition. All of that literally happens. Mostly what happens though is a budding relationship between the widow and the reverend and how that effects others in their lives. Really there's at least 2 overlapping love triangles. The appeal here really comes from exploring these relationships, from Perry's lush descriptive language, and from a different look at Victorian times. If you want monster hunting, you'll likely leave disappointed. 72. The Elusive Mrs. Pollifax by Dorothy Gilman - Widow, spy, and sensible old lady in a silly hat, Mrs Pollifax once again travels to into danger and has to deal with dangerous enemies of Democracy. I find these to be just delightful. 73. Man Tiger by Eka Kurniawan - This was my "Place I want to travel" someone in the lit thread asked about books from Bali and the response was that Kurniawan was the name to know, so here we are. Margio brutally murders a neighbor, and this book takes a deep dive into Margio's family and the family of the murdered man, Anwar Sadat (no relation) until the whys and wherefores are simply and stunningly revealed at the end. This took me a little bit to get into, since I was expecting more tiger, but this wound up as a really good read. 74. Your Heart is a Muscle the Size of a Fist by Sunil Yapa - This follows 7 people through the 1999 WTO riots in Seattle. 3 protesters, 3 police, and a delegate from Sri Lanka. It's interesting to see it from all sides, and I feel like Yapa did a good job of capturing the optimism and passion of the protesters. It's a little too much though. A little to pat how the characters come together. The good guys a little too good. The bad guys a little too bad. At times, a little too overwritten. On the whole this was a good boo that felt like it probably could have been better. 1) Read some books. Set a number and go hog wild. 74/60 2) Of the books you read this year, make sure at least 20% of them are written by women. 31/15 3) Of the books you read this year, make sure at least 20% of them are written by someone non-white. 23/15 4) Read at least one book by an LGBT author. - Taste of Honey 5) Read at least one TBB BoTM and post in the monthly thread about it. - Mother Night 6) Read a book someone else in the thread recommends (a wildcard!) 7) Read something that was recently published (anything from after 1st January 2016). - Umami 8) Read something which was published before you were born. Grendel 9) Read something in translation. - The Story of My Teeth 10) Read something from somewhere you want to travel. - Man Tiger 11) Read something political - No Knives in the Kitchens of this City 12) Read something historical. - For All the Tea in China 12a) Read something about the First World War. 13) Read something biographical. - The Egg and I 14) Read some poetry. 15) Read a play. - For colored girls who have considered suicide/When the rainbow is enuf 16) Read a collection of short stories. - Natural History of Hell 17) Read something long (500+ pages). - Stiletto 18) Read something which was banned or censored. 19) Read a satire. - Blackass 20) Read something about honour. 21) Read something about fear- The Changeling 22) Read something about one (or more!) of the seven sins. - Get Carter 23) Read something that you love. - The Shipping News 24) Read something from a non-human perspective. - Memoirs of a Polar Bear
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Sep 1, 2017 16:43
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August! 40. Cyteen: The Vindication. C. J. Cherryh. The story starts good but then turns into a mess with a bunch unexplained things and supposedly smart characters doing dumb stuff. Just mediocre. 41. La sustancia del mal. Luca D'Andrea. Nice story but it wastes a lot of time in superfluos stuff. The main character is not someone I'd like to follow and his investigations felt really serendipitous. The setting was pretty nice, tough it was too much. 42. Lord of Chaos. Robert Jordan. Some nice action and the story is progressing, awesome! Quite a long read, but it holds the reader just fine. 43. Brothers in Arms. Louis McMaster Bujold. The books of the space saga of Vorkosigan are almost always quick, entertaining and fun. This was not the exception. 44. Half a King. Joe Abercrombie. A good fantasy coming of age story? Yes, it is. Quite a surprise since this author is not know for this kind of stories. 45. Broken Angels. Richard K. Morgan. The author tried to scale the odds from a cyberpunk detective story to a more space opera kind of story and almost succeeded, but it wasn't good enough. The story is kind of predictable and the characters beside Kovacs are cliches. 46. Blood Rites. Jim Butcher. Another fun read in the Dresden Files series. And now he has a vampire brother and a dog! Some parts of the story were really implausible, but I'm not going to ask much about that in this series. 1) Read some books. Set a number and go hog wild. 46/75 2) 3) Of the books you read this year, make sure at least 20% of them are written by someone non-white. 8/15 4) 5) 6) Read a book someone else in the thread recommends (a wildcard!). The Urth of the New Sun. Gene Wolfe. 7) 8) 9) 10) 11) 12) 13) 14) Read some poetry. 15) Read a play. 16) 17) 18) 19) Read a satire. 20) Read something about honour. 21) 22) Read something about one (or more!) of the seven sins. 23) 24)
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Sep 2, 2017 17:18
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1. Jerusalem - Alan Moore7, 17, 23 2. A Billion Wicked Thoughts - Ogi Ogas and Sai Gaddam3, 22 3. Herman (The Game Warden, The Death of a Craft) - Laszlo Krasznahorkai9 4. The Atrocity Exhibition - J.G. Ballard8, 18 5. The Last Wolf - Laszlo Krasznahorkai9 6. The Kingdom of This World - Alejo Carpentier3, 9, 12 7. Philosophy and Opinions of Marcus Garvey3, 8 8. Wolf Hall - Hilary Mantel2, 12, 13, 17 9. Destruction and Sorrow Beneath the Heavens - Laszlo Krasznahorkai9, 10 10. Sudden Death - Alvaro Enrigue3, 9, 23 11. Caligula for President - Cintra Wilson2, 19 12. The Dark Highlander - Karen Marie Moning2, 22 ----end of January 13. Universal Harvester - John Darnielle7 14. The Plague - Albert Camus5, 8, 9 15. The Prophet: The Life of Leon Trotsky - Isaac Deutscher8, 11, 13, 17 16. A Temple of Texts: Essays - William H. Gass 17. The Child To Come: Life After the Human Catastrophe - Rebekah Sheldon2, 7 18. We Are Legion (We Are Bob) - Dennis E. Taylor7, 24 19. The Poetics of Space - Gaston Bachelard8, 9 -----end of February 20. Fight Club 2 - Chuck Palahniuk, Cameron Stewart7, 19 21. Songs of a Dead Dreamer & Grimscribe - Thomas Ligotti16, 21, 22 22. The Emergence of Social Space - Kristin Ross2, 11, 12 23. The Black Monday Murders, Volume 1 - Jonathan Hickman, Tomm Coker7 24. Aquarium - David Vann21 25. The Master of Mankind - Aaron Dembski-Bowden7, 20 26. At Swim-Two-Birds - Flann O'Brien8 27. Sleeping Giants - Sylvain Neuvel7 -----end of March 28. Waking Gods - Sylvain Neuvel7 29. Blitzed: Drugs in the Third Reich - Norman Ohler7, 12, 22 30. The Last Night: Anti-Work, Atheism, Adventure - Federico Campagna3, 11, 22, 23 31. Remainder - Tom McCarthy 32. The Circle Game - Margaret Atwood2, 8, 14 33. Star Wars: Thrawn - Timothy Zahn7, 24 34. Buddha - Karen Armstrong2, 12, 13 35. Literature Class - Julio Cortazar3, 9 -----end of April 36. Wormwood, Gentleman Corpse: Omnibus Edition - Ben Templesmith19, 24 37. The Zen in Modern Cosmology - Chi-sing Lam3, 23 38. The Great and Holy War - Philip Jenkins12, 12a 39. Prisons We Choose To Live Inside - Doris Lessing2, 8, 11 40. The Player of Games - Iain M. Banks24 41. October - China Mieville11, 12, 12a -----end of May 42. The Complete Short Stories, Volume 1, 1944-1953 - Roald Dahl8, 16, 19 43. The Carrion Throne: Vaults of Terra #1 - Chris Wraight7, 24 44. Being Insomniac: How Sleeplessness Alarmed Modernity - Lee Scrivner12 45. Are Prisons Obsolete? - Angela Davis2, 3, 11 46. Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone - J.K. Rowling2 47. Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets - J.K. Rowling2 48. Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban - J.K. Rowling2 49. The Man Without a Face: The Unlikely Rise of Vladimir Putin - Masha Gessen2, 11, 12, 13 50. Black Chalk - Christopher Yates -----end of June 51. The Multiversity - Grant Morrison et al.24 52. Sekret Machines: Chasing Shadows (Book 1) - A.J. Hartley & Tom DeLonge7, 17 53. The History of Sexuality: Volume 1 - Michel Foucault4, 8, 9, 12 54. Sewer, Gas, and Electric: The Public Works Trilogy - Matt Ruff19, 23 55. Hitler's American Model: The United States and the Making of Nazi Race Law - James Q. Whitman11, 12 56. Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire - J.K. Rowling2 57. The American People: Search For My Heart (Vol. 1) - Larry Kramer4, 19 -----end of July 58. IBM and the Holocaust - Edwin Black11, 12 59. Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix - J.K. Rowling2, 17 60. The Worm at the Core: On the Role of Death in Life - Sheldon Solomon et al.21 61. The Dwarf - Par Lagerkqvist8, 9 62. Cosmic Trigger (Vol. 1), Final Secrets of the Illuminati - Robert Anton Wilson8, 19 63. Black Legion (WH40K) - Aaron Dembski-Bowden7 -----end of August 64. Hegel: A Reinterpretation - Walter Kaufmann8 65. Lincoln in the Bardo - George Saunders7, 12, 13 66. Black Skin, White Masks - Frantz Fanon3, 8, 11, 12 67. Small Gods - Terry Pratchett19 -----end of September 68. "Exterminate All The Brutes" - Sven Lindqvist11, 12 69. Burnt Tongues - edited by Chuck Palahniuk16, 19 70. Audition - Ryu Murakami3, 9 71. The Anatomy of Human Destructiveness - Erich Fromm13, 22 72. The Black Jacobins - C.L.R. James3, 12 1) Read some books. Set a number and go hog wild. 60/100 2) Of the books you read this year, make sure at least 20% of them are written by women. 11/20 3) Of the books you read this year, make sure at least 20% of them are written by someone non-white. 11/20 4) Read at least one book by an LGBT author. 5) Read at least one TBB BoTM and post in the monthly thread about it. 6) Read a book someone else in the thread recommends (a wildcard!) --> Human Acts - Han Kang2, 3, 9, 12 7) Read something that was recently published (anything from after 1st January 2016). 8) Read something which was published before you were born. 9) Read something in translation. 10) Read something from somewhere you want to travel. 11) Read something political. 12) Read something historical. 12a) Read something about the First World War. 13) Read something biographical. 14) Read some poetry. 15) Read a play. 16) Read a collection of short stories. 17) Read something long (500+ pages). 18) Read something which was banned or censored. 19) Read a satire. 20) Read something about honour. 21) Read something about fear. 22) Read something about one (or more!) of the seven sins. 23) Read something that you love. 24) Read something from a non-human perspective. mdemone fucked around with this message at 14:37 on Oct 17, 2017 |
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Sep 16, 2017 00:53
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mdemone posted:58. IBM and the Holocaust - Edwin Black11, 12 This sounds interesting, how was it?
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Sep 16, 2017 03:33
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August 92. Dead Man's Walk - Larry McMurtry 93. The Forever War - Joe Haldeman 94. The Aeronaut’s Windlass (The Cinder Spires #1) - Jim Butcher 95. The Sheltering Sky - Paul Bowles 96. Wild Seed - Octavia Butler 97. Comanche Moon - Larry McMurtry 98. Mind of My Mind - Octavia Butler Oh hey, two weeks have gone by and I haven't updated. Most everything I read was pretty solid - I really enjoyed finishing Larry McMurtry's Lonesome Dove series, with Dead Man's Walk and Comanche Moon. Gus McCrae and Woodrow McCall are such a great mismatched/perfectly-matched team, I love his characters and dialogue; I'm considering going back to read the first book again (since it comes after the fourth book, chronologically...) Also excellent was Octavia Butler's "Patternmaster" series, which I've since finished this month. The first two are strange and excellent (a four-thousand-year-old man is breeding a race of psychics and is challenged by a shapeshifter and one of his own progeny) and I'm pretty impressed with her style and imagination. The Jim Butcher was silly, but fun, and The Forever War was a pretty solid sci-fi classic. Clear loser this month: The Sheltering Sky, picked because it was on one of Time's best 100 books list. It went from "oh look at these drunk/lost/depressed Americans and Europeans in a non-white setting" (in this case French North Africa) to super racist prettttty quick in the final third of the book. 1) Read some books. Set a number and go hog wild. (98/100) 2) Of the books you read this year, make sure at least 20% of them are written by women: Butler 3) Of the books you read this year, make sure at least 20% of them are written by someone non-white. Butler 4) 5) 6) Read a book someone else in the thread recommends (a wildcard!) 7) 8) Read something which was published before you were born - The Sheltering Sky 9) 10) 11) 12) 12a) Read something about the First World War. 13) Read something biographical. 14) 15) Read a play. 16) 17) Read something long (500+ pages) 18) 19) 20) 21) 22) 23) 24) Don't think I've forgotten that wild card - Giovanni's Room is a great book and I plan to reread it soon. Baldwin's a genius.
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Sep 16, 2017 05:34
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Radio! posted:This sounds interesting, how was it? Really interesting look at how IBM's automated card-sorting systems allowed the emerging Nazi regime to identify and target individual people on a much more precise level, such that instead of saying "hey there's a Jewish community, let's send a bunch of guys to go figure out who's Jewish and kick them out to the east", they could instead say "this guy living on this street is Jewish and here's how we know". Thomas Watson, IBM's founder who had quite a cult of personality in the company, was a self-made millionaire and total jerkoff who would do anything for a buck, including setting up a Polish IBM subsidiary called Dehomag that made a poo poo-ton of money for many years, especially once the Final Solution really got underway. Basically IBM made countless millions helping the Nazis commit genocide more efficiently. And they've never denied it, they just say that all the records were destroyed in the war and they actually did turn over lots of surviving information to independent reviewers, especially in recent decades.
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Sep 16, 2017 17:28
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18/24 female authors 11/12 non-fiction The two Lone Wolf books I read as part of this ongoing let's play and I really enjoyed both of them. They have a lot of nostalgia value for me as I first started reading the series when I was about five but the first one especially does seem to hold up pretty well. There are a lot of problems with the series but they're still pretty fun, especially to play as a group. I picked Eternity up at a second-hand book sale for 50 cents or so and I was really hoping it was going to be entertainingly crazy, but it turned out to just be about Jesus rather than aliens or something. The author seems to be one of those Christians who thinks that the only possible explanation for people not believing in Jesus is that they just haven't heard about him, so all his arguments boil down to "look, this really happened and it's amazing!" Maigret was another one I picked up really cheap, having vaguely heard of the series before, and I don't know if I just got a really bad translation or what, but it was terrible. There was no personality at all, and often felt more like reading a transcript than a novel. And The Art of War was similarly disappointing. Some of the illustrative examples were interesting, but the core text was just dull and obvious. Like, who needs to be told "if you're vastly outnumbered, try to avoid fighting"? Full reviews on Goodreads.
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Sep 30, 2017 09:06
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apophenium posted:Hello, I've been lax in posting updates, so here's a big one of everything I've read this year so far. All right, I've finished my number goal. Total: 40/40 Female Authors: 17/40 = 42.5% Authors of Color: 13/40 = 32.5% 35. Too Like the Lightning, Ada Palmer - Riveting. The gendered pronoun stuff was more of a distraction than it was in the Ancillary series. Some great worldbuilding and a funky plot made it a really enjoyable read. 36. Night Thoughts, Wallace Shawn - A short, meandering essay on the plight of the unlucky at the hands of the lucky. Makes points obliquely, subtly. Entertaining, but didn't have more to it than that. 37. The Stone Sky, N.K. Jemisin - Very poignant conclusion to this trilogy. Superb stuff. Had a lot to say politically, too, if you read things certain ways. Excited for whatever Jemisin does next. 38. Hamlet, William Shakespeare - Somehow I had never read Hamlet, but I had to for class. Obviously incredibly influential. Certainly a good read. Not much more to say, though. 15 39. Binti, Nnedi Okorafor - Honestly expected more from this. Not that it was bad, but it had been hyped up a bit. I might still go ahead and read the others, see if they go anywhere since they're short. 40. Lolita, Vladimir Nabokov - Ah jeez, Nabokov, couldn't you have written about anything else? A beautifully written book about an absolutely despicable man doing despicable things. 18 I'm going to continue reading books throughout the rest of the year. I'l of course try to preserve the percentage challenges in 2 and 3.
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Oct 1, 2017 16:33
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TrixRabbi posted:Any chance I could jump in late? I had been reading pretty regularly this year but I've fallen off quite a bit this summer and want to bounce back before the year's end. So far I'm at 27 books read, but I think 42 by December 31 is an achievable goal. I've been reading a lot of non-fiction as of late, and have been moving towards shorter works (150 pages or less). I've also been working in business books as a way of complementing my more left-wing readings. I want to try to tackle a couple meatier books and work in a few more novels or short story collections. 28. One Dimensional Woman by Nina Power Long essay/Short book on depictions of women in media and society and the false dichotomy applied to feminism, particularly in regards to public figures such as Sarah Palin who have been co-opted as "feminist" by right-wingers, but in actuality work against the liberty and equality of women. Mass consumer culture, Power argues, has co-opted feminism in an attempt to strip it of its radical roots and represent it as adverts reinforcing capitalist and patriarchal interests. Solid, quick read and given that it's almost 10 years old it's actually absent of a lot of the modern post-social media feminist ticks we've become over-familiarized with while still offering relevant, modern critique. 29. Conscious Capitalism: Liberating the Heroic Spirit of Business by John Mackey & Raj Sisodia The CEO of Whole Foods here to tell you all about how socially conscious and beneficial his business is while conveniently demonizing unions and ignoring the assimilative destruction his stores bring on the neighborhoods where they emerge. Interesting for gaining insight into his libertarian approach to business, but he directly tells the reader that his premise is based on capitalism being an absolute good in the world and the driver of true innovation. If you accept the premise then you're probably on board with everything he says, if you don't then the holes in his arguments immediately become clear, especially as he attempts to defend himself against his past scandals (somehow he is never the bad guy). 30. They Live by Jonathan Lethem Part of the short-lived "Deep Focus" book series which attempted to do for cult film what 33 1/3 did for classic albums, which is provide different authors the opportunity to write short books on their favorite films taking an in-depth look. The only previous Lethem I've read is, funny enough, his 33 1/3 on Talking Heads' Fear of Music, but I have no interest in his novels, especially after this. While he does a decent enough job describing scenes in They Live and sometimes offering insight, so much of this book is weighted down by this sense that They Live is not "a serious film." His entire intro seems to hedge on a defense of his choice of subject matter, comparing his efforts to write about Carpenter to past authors efforts to write about Hitchcock (and admitting his work is inferior, a little tip Jonathan, never tell the reader they're getting an inferior product just cause you're insecure). What both his books on Fear of Music and They Live do is they end up revealing less about the movies and seemingly on accident revealing more about Lethem's own self-consciousness being a nerd into nerdy media and feeling guilty that they're not quote unquote "high art." No one needs that kind of attitude. If you've chosen to write about They Live it's cause you recognize its artistic worth, it's just as legitimate as writing about Bergman or Tarkovsky. 31. Astro Noise: A Survival Guide for Living Under Total Surveillance by Laura Poitras A very well-designed book published to accompany Poitras' "Astro Noise" exhibit at the Whitney art museum in New York in 2015. Poitras actually did little of the writing here, instead dedicating the pages to a series of experimental essays on the subject of surveillance written by her friends, colleagues, and fellow persecuted artists. Among those writing include Ai Weiwei documenting his surveillance by the Chinese government, Edward Snowden and Jacob Appelbaum offering brief thoughts on the surveillance state, Lakhdar Boumediene recounting his imprisonment in Guantanamo Bay, Kate Crawford writing about the Greeks, and Dave Eggers offering a sample from his screenplay for the adaptation of The Circle. A surprisingly quick read, the essays are fascinating mixes of academia and literature, fitting the overall artistic vision of Poitras' museum exhibit while still educating on the NSA's practices. Not exactly what I expected or hoped for when I picked it up (I would have liked to hear Poitras' voice more directly describing her experiences in this area) but a good read nonetheless.
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Oct 1, 2017 18:49
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Officially hit my number goal this month and have hit the percentages for the women/POC challenges although I will keep reading this year and will try to maintain those. Closing in on the other challenges but I do still have that 2,500 page (plus 100 hour miniseries?) wildcard, so... Scaachi Koul - One Day We'll All Be Dead and None of This Will Matter (Very funny collection of essays.) Katie Kitamura - The Longshot (A relatively interesting story with an interesting writing style.) Matt Taibbi - Insane Clown President (I don't know why I read this beyond it was in a hotel I was stuck at.) Stephen King - Revival (Definitely one of the better 'recent' King books. A fun ending.) Katie Kitamura - A Separation (I liked The Longshot so picked this up, but the story was really dull.) David Maraniss - Once in a Great City: A Detroit Story (I think Detroit's rise and fall are really interesting so this was a nice look at the rise. I have a few other books on my list to read about the fall...) 6) Read a book someone else in the thread recommends (a wildcard!) 12a) Read something about the First World War. 15) Read a play. 18) Read something which was banned or censored. 19) Read a satire. 24) Read something from a non-human perspective.
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Oct 2, 2017 01:48
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Ben Nevis posted:1. A Biographers Tale by AS Byatt A little bit of a slower month than some. I had a few books take longer than expected, but I got caught up by the expected backlog caused by Essex Serpent. I did manage to finish my WWI book and a book about Honor. I just started my Banned book and anticipate finishing Poetry next week, which means I should finish handily, assuming I can get a wild card. If anyone reads this bit, wildcard me! 75. The Shadow of the Wind by Carlos Ruiz Zafon - I grabbed this because the description made it seem like it might scratch that Foucault's Pendulum or Club Dumas itch. Unfortunately it did not, but it's a pretty good book in it's own right. Very much a gothic story set in Barcelona. A teenage boy tries to unravel the mystery of why books by Julian Carax all seem to have disappeared. The secret lies tangled in messy family histories and underhanded deeds during the Spanish Revolution. 76. Raven Strategem by Yoon Ha Lee - Lee's followup to Ninefox Gambit. I think I liked this better than Gambit. A different sort of Space Opera, this is good fun. 77. The Bedlam Stacks by Natasha Pulley - I enjoyed Watchmaker of Filigree Street so figured I'd like her second book, which is not really a sequel but apparently set in the same universe. That was ultimately disappointing. I'm not sure I want to read a bunch of books in this universe. It was decent. Not as good as Watchmaker. Some stuff seemed shoehorned in from the first, and I really don't want a future book with dumb British flying, exploding trees. That Ms Pulley is a bridge to far. 78. Chronicle of a Death Foretold by Gabriel Garcia Marquez - So, at a loss for what do about Honor, I checked the library. You can search by subject and Honor - Fiction was one option. Only 4 books about that in the library. One is in Chinese. One is Heroes by Abercombie (which I've read) one is some weird soldier in Iraq murder mystery, and one is Chronicle of a Death Foretold by GGM. The choice was easy, and the book was good. 79. So Many Olympic Exertions by Anelise Chen - The title was intriguing, the cover suitably abstract, and it had 4.5 stars on Goodreads. So I checked it out. Then realized that was 4.5 stars on like 10 reviews. It's possible I'm the only person not related to Anelise Chen to have read this. Athena Chen is a grad student who is floundering. 7 years and she can't finish her dissertation on the Meaning of Sports. She is shaken emotionally when she learns an ex committed suicide. Her funding is finally cut off. Athena tries to come to terms with her life through sports. She's fascinated by losers and failures, especially in tennis, running, and other sports where you can see the athlete's face. Interspersed between bits of inner monologue, diary entries, and more typical storytelling are sports vignettes. Not the typical stories of overcoming, but what happens when it's all too much and all that's left is exhaustion. Somehow it works. Chen keeps enough of a wry humor present to keep it from bogging down and the shifts frequent as they are seem effortless. This was a surprising read going into it and actually deserves the Goodreads ranking. It didn't get over the 5 hump for me, but I can see why folks would go that way. 80. Vengeance is Mine, All Others Pay Cash by Eka Kurniawan - It has a great title, and I liked the last Kurniawan I read, so... After witnessing a traumatic rape as a teenager, Ajo Kawir becomes impotent. Initially this leads to fury fighting and a mob hit. Later he takes his penis as sort of a guru, admonishing a more ascetic existence. On the whole, this came off flat to me. There was some humor, but ultimately it seemed like a pulp novel. No real meaning. I am curious why the translator decided to so commonly translate dick as "bird" given that cock is right there. 81. Her Privates We by Frederick Manning - My WW1 novel. It's a novel about the Battle of the Somme written by a veteran of that battle. Specifically it focuses on one of the offenses toward the end of the battle. Private Bourne and his buddies are waiting to "over the top" and spend a lot of time doing parades, drinking, complaining about officers, and trying to dodge scutwork. Like 90% of the book is them doing this. There's occasional deaths, but they're offscreen. You get to know the men and see a few different views of the war, which only makes it all the more affecting when their turn actually comes near the end. This was good. Would recommend for folks needing their WWI book. 1) Read some books. Set a number and go hog wild. 81/60 2) Of the books you read this year, make sure at least 20% of them are written by women. 33/16 3) Of the books you read this year, make sure at least 20% of them are written by someone non-white. 27/16 4) Read at least one book by an LGBT author. - Taste of Honey 5) Read at least one TBB BoTM and post in the monthly thread about it. - Mother Night 6) Read a book someone else in the thread recommends (a wildcard!) 7) Read something that was recently published (anything from after 1st January 2016). - Umami 8) Read something which was published before you were born. Grendel 9) Read something in translation. - The Story of My Teeth 10) Read something from somewhere you want to travel. - Man Tiger 11) Read something political - No Knives in the Kitchens of this City 12) Read something historical. - For All the Tea in China 12a) Read something about the First World War. - Her Privates We 13) Read something biographical. - The Egg and I 14) Read some poetry. 15) Read a play. - For colored girls who have considered suicide/When the rainbow is enuf 16) Read a collection of short stories. - Natural History of Hell 17) Read something long (500+ pages). - Stiletto 18) Read something which was banned or censored. 19) Read a satire. - Blackass 20) Read something about honour. - Chronicle of a Death Foretold 21) Read something about fear- The Changeling 22) Read something about one (or more!) of the seven sins. - Get Carter 23) Read something that you love. - The Shipping News 24) Read something from a non-human perspective. - Memoirs of a Polar Bear Ben Nevis fucked around with this message at 18:16 on Oct 2, 2017 |
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Oct 2, 2017 18:12
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Haven't updated in a while... I think this is all of them from August/September. 25. Megan Whale Turner - Thick as thieves: Nothing particularly different in terms of tone from the previous books, which isn't a complaint: the familiar beats of a solid YA series that remains fun. 26. China Mieville - This Census Taker: Not my favourite book of his, really. I prefer his more imaginative fantasy works. 27. Gail Carriger - Soulless: Regency romance with manly bare-chested werewolves and camp gay vampires and don't loving judge me. 28. Hannu Rajaniemi - Collected fiction: High-brow sci-fi short stories. Most of them weren't as good as his full-length novels due to his world-building taking up too much of the actual story time, but a few gems. 29-30: Max Gladstone - Last first snow, Four roads cross: Disappointed with four roads because in the end, it was nearly identical in terms of plot beats to earlier works and read more like frakenstein of previous stories without heart. 31. Mira Grant - Newsflesh #1: It was... okay? A bit trite and predictable, and full of unnecessary and unexamined incest overtones that are apparently canonised later. Won't read the others. 32. N. K. Jemisin - Stone sky: i cried a lot. a lot. 33. Yoon Ha Lee - Raven Strategem: A big step up from the first novel, this book focused on the chemistry between the characters and their interaction with a broken, psychologically abusive system rather than the mysterious spacemagic world building, and benefited from it. 34. Yoon Ha Lee - Extracurricular Activities: Short story of undercover agents set centuries before the trilogy. 35. Kameron Hurley - The stars are legion: It's time for body horror. It's always body horror. 36. Jonathan L. Howard - Johannes Cabal the Necromancer: I enjoyed the adventures of amoral necromancer doing bad things, and doing bad things badly. Did not finish: Roshani Chokshi - The Star-Touched Queen: "I'm going to fall in love at first sight in a series of flowery metaphors and then take the advice of a woman who explictly loathes me against all common sense! I'm so lovable!" yeah, pass. made it to around the 35% mark before I realised it was only getting worse.
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Oct 4, 2017 14:03
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September! 47. Harry Potter and the Magician's Stone. J.K. Rowling. A fun short reread. Even after rereading this for a few times, it's still the same. I suppose it's the fact that I first read it as an adult that makes it that way. 48. Timelike Infinity. Stephen Baxter. The concept was interesting. The time travel and interaction between future races was good, with a lot of hard sci-fi aspect into it. But the story was too simple and the protagonists weren't relatable. 49. Under Heaven. Guy Gavriel Kay. Part historical fiction, part fantasy, this author has his own niche and he does it very well. This was no exception, even with the slow beginning. 50. Billions & Billions: Thoughts on Life and Death at the Brink of the Millennium. Carl Sagan. Sagan's last book is a beautiful reminder of the cold uncaring universe that surrounds us and the little blue planet that is our only home inside that universe. 51. The Three Body Problem. Cixin Liu. A hard science fiction story that reads almost like a technical book sometimes. The other times are filled with a nice story and some weird characters from mediocre to good, but not of that diminish how awesome the book is. 52. On Writing, A Memoir of the Craft. Stephen King. Some nice advice for writing from one of the masters. King has some good stories to tell, but I can't stop thinking about all the stuff he didn't write about... 53. The Drowning Girl. Caitlin R. Kiernan. There might be a good story lost in the ramblings of this pretentious piece of art. I didn't find it. Maybe it could have worked better for me as a short novelette, but that isn't going to give me my wasted time back. 1) Read some books. Set a number and go hog wild. 53/75 2) 3) Of the books you read this year, make sure at least 20% of them are written by someone non-white. 9/15 4) 5) 6) Read a book someone else in the thread recommends (a wildcard!). The Urth of the New Sun. Gene Wolfe. 7) 8) 9) 10) 11) 12) 13) 14) Read some poetry. 15) Read a play. 16) 17) 18) 19) Read a satire. 20) Read something about honour. 21) 22) Read something about one (or more!) of the seven sins. 23) 24)
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Oct 4, 2017 15:28
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Haven't updated for ages and I'm never going to make the target now v vThe Invisible Circus by Jennifer Egan An American flower child goes on holiday to Europe and dies. Years later, her younger sister follows to discover what happened. Slow start. Dionysiac. It's really irritating that the older sister is named Faith. The younger, Phoebe, is convincingly damaged by her experiences; it's not always fun to read. A really impressive debut. The Dispossessed by Ursula le Guin I forgot to note anything about this at the time, or post in the thread, but it was interesting and the sturcture matched the circle/line imagery nicely. Here, There, Elsewhere by William Least Heat-Moon Collected travel writing by the author of Blue Highways. Most of it's good with occasional lapses, but the articles about travelling to the UK are weak. I'm not sure if that's because he's out of his knowledge, or looks better when he's talking about stuff I don't know about. Exotics and Retrospectives by Lafcadio Hearn The guy who wrote Kwaidan. Five longish essays about Japanese culture – frogs, musical insects, climbing Mt. Fuji, Zen, and inscriptions for the dead – which are interesting, and ten short ones with occult drivel explaining why people like blue and not red, and stuff. Borders on  . The second half is really overwritten, I suppose because he has nothing to actually write about.The Trader, the Owner, the Slave by James Walvin History book about British slavery/abolition, in the form of three biographies: a slaver who later became a priest and abolitionist; a plantation owner in Jamaica; and a slave, in fact, Oludah Equiano. Interesting, but pretty shallow and unsatisfying. Interesting to see it focus in on slavery, more and more intimate. About Writing by Samuel R. Delany Part creative-writing instruction, part discussion of how to make a career of writing, part discussion of the nature of the canon/literature etc. Gives the impression that he knows what he's talking about when it comes to the writer's life, equally inspiring and forbidding. V. by Thomas Pychon Of a piece with GR, but not as good, you can see the development though. Some really good stuff, still. Very confusing... The Terrors of the Night by Thomas Nashe Elizabethan pamphlet about how awful dreams are, also demonology and why fortune-tellers are all liars, exuberant, apparently improvised, vigorous, echoes of Othello and Macbeth. Conamara Blues by John O'Donohue Irish poetry. Stark, lyrical, gets repetetive. Mostly they are about nature and meditative stillness. The Jesus poems are good and there's a few more human ones towards the end, which make a nice change – it was getting wearying and humourless. Much Ado About Nothing by William Shakespeare It's a comedy, but almost a tragedy – twist it a bit and it's Othello. I was expecting Beatrice and Benedick to be the main draw, but they're only really a subplot. Don John, the bastard, would rather rule in Hell than serve in Heaven. The central fake-out scene doesn't really hang together (why's Hero sleeping alone? How do Borachio and Margaret not wake her up? What's Margaret's deal? Why does Borachio turn his coat, didn't he realise it was this serious? And why doesn't Conrade say anything at all after being arrested?) Also, it's odd that Beatrice is never explicitly identified as Antonio's daughter. Jane Eyre by Charlotte Brontë My fourth or so read. This time I particularly noticed that the Christ figure is wrong, quite a few big references to Sense and Sensibility and Oedipus (and less important ones to a range of imaginative writers, especially 1001 Nights) and that Jane fucks a dude with no hand or eyes, ugh. Wide Sargasso Sea by Jean Rhys Logical to read next. Clever reworking of the original, especially Bertha/Anoinetta's name and the house-burning at the beginning. Good descriptions of the landscape. Lying on the Couch by Irvin D. Yalom Middle class. The Fishermen by Chigozie Obioma This was nominated for the Booker? Why? Journeyman stuff, especially the overuse of flashbacks. I think the Igbo proverbs were good, but I'm too ignorant to say if they were really good or just cliché. The Fifth Season by N. K. Jemisin The trick with the protagonist was good. Shame about the paucity of landscape descriptions, which kind of hobble it as epic, and the basic metaphor of orogenes = the oppressed is silly. One Hundred Years of Solitude by Gabriel García Márquez An amazing novel. Crammed and pulsing with life. Fascinating. I was bewitched by the opening, then found that pleasure developing, darkening, recomplicating as the story emerged. I should read about the history of Columbia to get more out of it, but what I got was horrible enough. And yet, there's hope too.
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Oct 5, 2017 05:45
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August - 5: 51. The Throwback (Tom Sharpe) 52. Siddharta (Herman Hesse) 53. Norse Mythology (Neil Gaiman) 54. A Tale for the Time Being (Ruth Ozeki) 55. Men Explain Things To Me (Rebecca Solnit) September - 8: 56. Eat & Run (Scott Jurek) 57. The Marathon Monks of Mount Hiei (John Stevens) 58. Rubicon (Tom Holland) 59. The Last Days of New Paris (China Mieville) 60. SPQR: A History of Ancient Rome (Mary Beard) 61. The Man in the High Castle (Philip K. Dick) 62. The Invisible Circus (Jennifer Egan) 63. Three Moments of an Explosion (China Mieville) Finished off my wildcard in September with Rubicon as recommended by Learnin Curve. Thanks! A really fun narrative history of the Roman Republic, from its founding up to the ascent of Augustus to the founding of the Empire. SPQR takes a longer view, continuing on through to the grant by Caracalla of citizenship to all freemen in the Empire. It's probably the more rigorous of the two, being written by an academic rather than an amateur historian, but they compliment each other nicely. Three Moments of an Explosion was an interesting collection of weird fiction shorts from Mieville. Some of it doesn't quite work, and one or two of the stories seemed to to be trying too hard to be clever (you can always tell which new word China's learned when writing a book - this time it was "misprision"), but there's some great stuff in here. Sacken was genuinely scary, and The Rope is the World has stuck with me. To date - 63: Booklord: 4-13, 16-24 Women: 20/63, 32% Non-white: 16/63, 24% 01. The Ottoman Centuries (Lord Kinross) 12 02. Snow Country (Yasunari Kawabata) 8 03. Signs Preceding the End of the World (Yuri Herrera) 9 04. Socialism: A Very Short Introduction (Michael Newman) 11 05. Human Acts (Han Kang) 7 06. As Meat Loves Salt (Maria McCann) 17 07. Buddhism: A Very Short Introduction (Damien Keown) 08. The Dog Who Dared to Dream (Sun-Mi Hwang) 24 09. Dirty Havana Trilogy (Pedro Juan Gutierrez) 18 10. Excession (Iain M. Banks) 11. They Who Do Not Grieve (Sia Figiel) 12. Hard Boiled Wonderland and the End of the World (Haruki Murakami) 13. Five Rivers Met on a Wooded Plain (Barney Norris) 23 14. What is not yours is not yours (Helen Oyeyemi) 16 15. The Plague (Albert Camus) 5 16. The Tale of Aypi (Ak Welsapar) 17. Disgrace (J.M. Coetzee) 20 18. Costa Rica: A Traveller's Literary Companion (Barbara Ras) 19. The Norman Conquest (Marc Morris) 20. It Can't Happen Here (Sinclair Lewis) 21. Coin Locker Babies (Ryu Murakami) 10 22. Broken April (Ismail Kadare) 23. If this is a man/The Truce (Primo Levi) 24. The State of Africa: A History of the Continent Since Independence (Martin Meredith) 25. The Circle of Karma (Kunzang Choden) 26. By Night the Mountain Burns (Juan Tomas Avila Laurel) 27. The Year of the Hare (Arto Paasilinna) 28. Goodfellas (Nicholas Pileggi) 13 29. A Cup of Rage (Raduan Nassar) 22 30. The Housekeeper and the Professor (Yoko Ogawa) 31. Moving Pictures (Terry Pratchett) 19 32. Animal: The Autobiography of a Female Body (Sara Pascoe) 33. The Lost Heart of Asia (Colin Thubron) 34. The Ticket that Exploded (William Burroughs) 4 35. I Have a Dream: The Speeches that Changed History (Ferdie Addis) 36. Flow My Tears, The Policeman Said (Philip K. Dick) 37. Fever Dream (Samanta Schweblin) 38. The Haunting of Hill House (Shirley Jackson) 21 39. The Queue (Basma Abdel Aziz) 40. The Lottery and Other Stories (Shirley Jackson) 41. Strange Weather in Tokyo (Hiromi Kawakami) 42. Reaching for the Skies (Ivan Rendall) 43. Purge (Sofi Oksanen) 44. October (China Mieville) 45. A Horse Walks Into a Bar (David Grossman) 46. The First Wife (Paulina Chiziane) 47. Wilt (Tom Sharpe) 48. Porterhouse Blue (Tom Sharpe) 49. Flesh-coloured Dominoes (Zigmunds Skujins) 50. Today We Die a Little: Emil Zatopek (Richard Askwith) 51. The Throwback (Tom Sharpe) 52. Siddharta (Herman Hesse) 53. Norse Mythology (Neil Gaiman) 54. A Tale for the Time Being (Ruth Ozeki) 55. Men Explain Things To Me (Rebecca Solnit) 56. Eat & Run (Scott Jurek) 57. The Marathon Monks of Mount Hiei (John Stevens) 58. Rubicon (Tom Holland) 59. The Last Days of New Paris (China Mieville) 60. SPQR: A History of Ancient Rome (Mary Beard) 61. The Man in the High Castle (Philip K. Dick) 62. The Invisible Circus (Jennifer Egan) 63. Three Moments of an Explosion (China Mieville)
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Oct 5, 2017 15:30
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September! 99. Brief Interviews with Hideous Men - David Foster Wallace 100. Kafka on the Shore - Haruki Murakami 101. Clay's Ark - Octavia Butler 102. Patternmaster - Octavia Butler 103. Blood Meridian - Cormac McCarthy 104. A Wrinkle in Time - Madeleine L'Engle 105. Otherland: City of Golden Shadows - Tad Williams 106. The Fifth Season - N.K. Jemison 107. The Obelisk Gate - N.K. Jemison I finished one series and started two more in September. The later novels in the Patternmaster series, Clay's Ark and Patternmaster, are completely different and mostly separated from the first two, giving the whole series this weirdly disconnected feel. (What blew my mind was that Patternmaster, the last one in the series, was written first - it feels like it'd be a completely different experience outside of the context of the rest...) I started the Broken Earth trilogy (Fifth Season, Obelisk Gate, and Stone Sky) and very much enjoyed it. I'm not sure why people are calling it sci-fi - it's post-apocalyptic fantasy. And I started one of my go-to series, the Otherland books by Tad Williams. I've read this and Memory Sorrow and Thorn so many times they're practically memorized by now, but what can I say? I like Williams's stuff. Finally, Blood Meridian is a lot better than I remembered from my first time through it, but as I recall I took that on as my first McCarthy and I wasn't used to his style. After reading the Border Trilogy and Suttree, I was a bit more open to it this time and thought it was great. 1) Read some books. Set a number and go hog wild. (107/100) 2) Of the books you read this year, make sure at least 20% of them are written by women: Butler, Jemison, L'Engle (I'm at approximately 33% female) 3) Of the books you read this year, make sure at least 20% of them are written by someone non-white. Butler, Jemison (Only about 15% here) 4) 5) 6) Read a book someone else in the thread recommends (a wildcard!) 7) Read something that was recently published (anything from after 1st January 2016). - The Obelisk Gate 8) Read something which was published before you were born - A Wrinkle in Time 9) Read something in translation - Kafka on the Shore 10) 11) 12) 12a) Read something about the First World War. 13) Read something biographical. 14) 15) Read a play. 16) Read a collection of short stories. - Brief Interviews with Hideous Men 17) Read something long (500+ pages) - Otherland 18) 19) 20) 21) 22) 23) Read something that you love. - Otherland 24) I should probably get on those areas of the challenge I haven't touched in a bit...
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Oct 6, 2017 05:25
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Oops, missed a few months again. I read a fair bit in August, although it was a lot of comics (and YA), and not as much in September... a developer bought my building and my partner and I ended up moving seventeen days after we were initially told we were going to have to move. So packing/moving/unpacking (as well as the half-marathon that I'm training for and work being really stressful) cut into my reading time. I'm also not doing very well on basically any of my personal challenges and am honestly just going to drop them for now. I'm planning on finishing Book Lord, Book Riot, and maybe Pop Sugar. I do definitely want to do the Nobel read sometime, but I don't think this is the right time for it. Anyways, here are my August and September reads: 52. Meddling Kids - Edgar Cantero (5/5) 53. Beastly Bones - William Ritter (3/5) 54. The Refrigerator Monologues - Catherynne M. Valente (4/5) 55. Ghostly Echoes - William Ritter (3/5) 56. Giant Days, Vol. 5 - John Allison (4/5) 57-61. Ms. Marvel, Vols. 1-5 - Willow Wilson (5/5, 4/5 x4) 62. When the English Fall - David Williams (4/5) 63. The Dire King - William Ritter (3/5) 64. When Dimple Met Rishi - Sandhya Menon (3/5) 65. The Epic Crush of Genie Lo - F.C. Yee (3/5) 66. What Makes This Book So Great - Jo Walton (4/5) 67. My Real Children - Jo Walton (5/5) 68. Patsy Walker AKA Hellcat, Vol. 3 - Kate Leth (3/5) 69. Grace and the Fever - Zan Romanoff (4/5) 70. The Gentleman's Guide to Vice and Virtue - Mackenzi Lee (3/5) Highlights were Meddling Kids, my Ms. Marvel reread, and my discovery of Jo Walton, especially My Real Children. Here's how I'm doing on the challenge: 1) Read some books. Set a number and go hog wild. 70/52 2) Of the books you read this year, make sure at least 20% of them are written by women. 62% 3) Of the books you read this year, make sure at least 20% of them are written by someone non-white. 21% 5) Read at least one TBB BoTM and post in the monthly thread about it. 6) Read a book someone else in the thread recommends (a wildcard!) 9) Read something in translation. 12a) Read something about the First World War. 14) Read some poetry. 15) Read a play. nerdpony fucked around with this message at 02:28 on Oct 11, 2017 |
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Oct 9, 2017 19:10
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19/24 female authors 11/12 non-fiction Nothing really stood out to me as particularly good or particularly bad this month. I liked the characters of Wuthering Heights and The Three-Body Problem but not the stories. The two Lone Wolf books were fun to play but neither of them is a particular favourite. Full reviews on Goodreads.
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Oct 30, 2017 04:10
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code:The Red Badge of Courage by Stephen Crane Not really interesting; it seems kind of flat and mechanical, although it's not terrible either The Man with Compound Eyes by Wu Ming-yi Excellent novel, like Murakami but better. The parts reflect each other and refer to each other, it's theme and structure mixing. It's bleak but touching and realistic; hits the spot between denial and despair. It's modern and up to date but in touch with the outside world. It's a look at the depressing side of Taiwan, especially if you're Aboriginal. So good. Stay for the metatextuality. Oh, and the sex is good too. A Confederacy of Dunces by John Kennedy Toole Ignatius Reilly probably isn't as hilarious as he seemed in 1981, but some of the comic setpieces are, and the setting and dialogue are really good. Shame about the ending. Safety Biscuits fucked around with this message at 05:09 on Oct 30, 2017 |
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Oct 30, 2017 05:01
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quote:1 - The Outsider, by Albert Camus Things have been slow going, so I only finished 7 shortish books in September and October. 46 - Persepolis, by Marjane Satrapi. Had seen (and loved) the film a few years ago, so it was high time I got around to actually reading the source material. It's very good, and Satrapi's simple style allows her to cover horrifying discussions of war and torture with the same clarity and humanity as the smaller episodes from her life. Her snapshots of Iranian life and culture before and after the '79 revolution, as well as the portrayal of civilian life during war with Iraq, make up an oral history of sorts - and ended up shocking me more than once. It's a life story about family, love, friendship, war, and finding one's identity, and I am very glad I finally read it. 47 - My Lesbian Experience With Loneliness, by Kabi Nagata. A candid tell-all manga about a woman's struggles with sexuality, mental illness, self-harm and loneliness, but it's sweet and funny and endearing too. It's not exactly a feel-good book, though - it goes to some dark places.The art is simple and cute, and some parts really resonated with me. A running theme is the importance of self-care, as well as the value even in incremental change. The twin desires for belonging and companionship have rarely been depicted with such urgency and clarity. I definitely recommend it. 48 - I Hate Myself And Want To Die: The 52 Most Depressing Songs You've Ever Heard, by Tom Reynolds. I've been reading bits of this off and on for ages, but finally finished it this month. It's a list of songs with dark, depressing or morbid themes, and Reynolds spends 4-8 pages on each one discussing the lyrics, instrumentation and context for their release. Obviously not something to be read straight through, more for delving into snippets while listening to the music. As a curator Reynolds has some good picks, including some more obscure work; his editorial voice does grate after a while, though. A lot of the time it feels like he's run out of things to say about a song or an artist, and much of the book feels padded. It works as a good introduction to some artists, though, and can make you see some tracks in a new light. 49 - This Blinding Absence of Light, by Tahar ben Jelloun. A harrowing and miserable novel based on the experiences of prisoners trapped in a Moroccan secret prison, in near-total darkness. The prose is beautiful and evocative, and there are moments that show the triumph of human spirit and willpower over unimaginable misery and hopelessness. Despite that, though, this was a gruelling, slow read, and one that I had to put down for days at a time because of the oppressive atmosphere it curated. An important book, definitely, and one that's worthy of praise, but not one I can see myself picking up again. 50 - Dress Your Family In Cordury And Denim, by David Sedaris. Comic memoir from an acclaimed writer whom I'd not read before this. The stories range from charmingly funny to surprisingly poignant, and the characters in Sedaris's life are drawn wonderfully. He captures a range of different voices and archetypes, and even the handful of more clichéd stories raised a smile. He writes candidly about his anxieties, his sexuality, his OCD, and the many foibles of his parents and siblings, in ways that really drew me in and brought them to life. I can see why he's so popular! 51 - Last Winter We Parted, by Fuminori Nakamura. Very dry Japanese psychological murder-mystery thing. The structure of the book - pairing first-person narrative with "archival material" from other characters - means the pacing is pretty poor, and by the book's "climax" I had lost track of what the core questions really were. The last third of the book on its own was better than the novel as a whole, I thought - though in hindight the way it's laid out is fairly interesting, it's not that engaging. The sparse, emotionless prose doesn't do much to alleviate that. Disappointing, for the most part. 52 - Jonathan Livingston Seagull, by Richard Bach. A famous novella, and one that I've been dimly aware of for a while. The title character is a seagull who teaches himself how to fly incredibly well, but is outcast from his flock for going against the Natural Order Of Things. He ascends to a higher plane of bird-knowledge, then returns to teach other seagulls how to transcend the ordinary. It's about as obvious and heavy-handed an allegory as I could have imagined, and reads exactly like the sort of thing you'd find in the "motivational/self-help" section of a bookshop. It's kind of sweet, though, and got some smiles out of me. Not particularly special, but I'm sure it's very special to some people. 2) Of the books you read this year, make sure at least 1/3 of them are written by women. - 20 - 2, 4, 8, 9, 10, 11, 12, 18, 19, 20, 23, 24, 25, 32, 35, 38, 40, 43, 46, 47 3) Of the books you read this year, make sure at least 1/3 of them are written by someone non-white. - 22 - 3, 9, 11, 12, 18, 22, 23, 27, 28, 29, 30, 31, 32, 33, 37, 40, 41, 43, 46, 47, 49, 51 6) Read a book someone else in the thread recommends (a wildcard!) - Black Boy - 12a) Read something about the First World War. - 15) Read a play. - 19) Read a satire. - 20) Read something about honour. - 22) Read something about one (or more!) of the seven sins. - Gertrude Perkins fucked around with this message at 06:41 on Oct 31, 2017 |
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Oct 31, 2017 06:39
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Made it over 50! 5) Read at least one TBB BoTM and post in the monthly thread about it. 6) Read a book someone else in the thread recommends (a wildcard!) 11) Read something political. 12) Read something historical. 12a) Read something about the First World War. 13) Read something biographical. 15) Read a play. 18) Read something which was banned or censored. 19) Read a satire. 20) Read something about honour. 21) Read something about fear. 22) Read something about one (or more!) of the seven sins.
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Oct 31, 2017 12:19
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September/October update. Erstwhile: 1: Revenger by Alastair Reynolds. 2: The Princess Diarist by Carrie Fisher. +1 woman 3: Mother Night by Kurt Vonnegut. 4. Binti by Nnedi Okorafor. + 1 woman, +1 nonwhite 5. Death's End by Liu Cixin. +1 nonwhite 6. Empire Games by Charles Stross. 7. Among Others by Jo Walton. +1 woman 8. We Are Legion (We Are Bob) by Dennis Taylor. 9. Bror din på prærien by Edvard Hoem. +1 Norwegian. 10. The Plague by Albert Camus. 11. Haimennesket by Hans Olav Lahlum. +1 Norwegian. 12. Land ingen har sett by Edvard Hoem. +1 Norwegian. 13. The Fifth Season by N.K. Jemisin.. +1 woman, +1 nonwhite. 14. The Long Cosmos by Stephen Baxter and (allegedly, although I doubt he contributed much to this one) Terry Pratchett. 15. The Dispossessed by Ursula K. LeGuin. +1 woman. 16. Aquarium by David Vann. 17. The Brothers Lionheart by Astrid Lindgren +1 woman. 18. 1001 Natt by Vetle Lid Larssen. +1 Norwegian, +1 nonfiction. 19. After Atlas by Emma Newman. +1 woman. 20. Exodus by Andreas Christensen. 21. Binti: Home by Nnedi Okorafor. +1 woman, +1 nonwhite. 22. Sandstorm by James Rollins. 23. For We Are Many (Bobiverse #2) by Dennis Taylor. 24. The Conference of the Birds by Farid Attar. 25. The Obelisk Gate by N.K. Jemisin. +1 woman, +1 nonwhite. 26. I, Claudius by Robert Graves. 27. Claudius the God by Robert Graves. 28. Salt: A World History by Mark Kurlansky. +1 nonfiction. 29. Huset mellom natt og dag by Ørjan Nordhus Karlssen. +1 Norwegian. 30. The Rise and Fall of D.O.D.O. by Neal Stephenson and Nicole Galland. +1 woman. 31. Min drøm om frihet by Amal Aden. LGBTQ, +1 woman, +1 nonwhite, +1 Norwegian, +1 nonfiction, biography. 32. Ficciones by Jorge Luis Borges. BOTM for July. 33. Predikanten ("The Preacher") by Camilla Läckberg. +1 woman. 34. Steinhoggeren ("The Stonecutter") by Camilla Läckberg. +1 woman. 35. The Guns of August by Barbara Tuchman.+1 woman, +1 nonfiction, First World War. 36. The Delirium Brief by Charles Stross. 37. Ulykkesfuglen by Camilla Läckberg. +1 woman. 38. Sporvekslingsmordet by Hans Olav Lahlum. +1 Norwegian. 39. Devil's Due by Taylor Anderson. 40. The Fishermen by Chigozie Obioma. +1 nonwhite. 41. All These Worlds by Dennis Taylor. 42. The Stone Sky by N.K. Jemisin. +1 woman, +1 nonwhite. 43. My Life and Hard Times by James Thurber. BOTM for August. +1 nonfiction 44. Discovering Scarfolk by Richard Littler. New: 45. Too Like the Lightning by Ada Palmer. Very interesting debut novel set in a very weird future, with a very weird narrator. +1 woman. 46. The Peregrine by J.A. Baker. Birdwatching in 1960s England, loving hardcore. Some of the best depictions of nature I've ever read. +1 nonfiction. 47. Ninefox Gambit by Yoon Ha Lee. A strong toss-em-in-the-deep-end weird space fantasy opera debut novel. +1 nonwhite author (also I understand Lee is a trans dude but it's hardly relevant for this book and I've got that point covered already). The last couple of months have sucked very hard as far as reading time goes, but I'm overall in OK shape to finish what I set out to do. (I am almost but not quite done with this month's BOTM.) Only have like three or four specific booklord points to hit and have candidates lined up for all of them. 1) Read some books. Set a number and go hog wild. 47/40 - goal crushed; new stretch goal of 60 books. 2) Of the books you read this year, make sure at least 20% of them are written by women. 17/47 =36% 3) Of the books you read this year, make sure at least 20% of them are written by someone non-white. 9/47 = 19% 11) Read something political. 15) Read a play. 18) Read something which was banned or censored. 20) Read something about honour. 24) Read something from a non-human perspective. Extra: At least 10 Norwegian books (translations don't count) - 7/10 so far At least 5 nonfiction books - 7/5 Read every BOTM (except optionally for ones I've read before) - 10/10 as of October (well, almost done with the latest one) No more than 5 rereads (vs. the vanilla goal, I would count them against specific goals) - 2/5 so far
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Nov 1, 2017 13:31
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Ben Nevis posted:1. A Biographers Tale by AS Byatt It was a slower month than expected, but I finished off all the challenge categories. So Challenge Complete! Just going to try and maintain the >%20 rules for the remainder. 82. Lolita by Vladimir Nabokov - My banned book for the year. I guess it was time to see what all the fuss was about. Nabokov certainly has a way with words, and I think the book is at it's most fun when he's playing with them. And when he sneaks in a Burma Shave ad. The most interesting aspect is HH particularly when his mask slips. 83 Ruin of Angels by Max Gladstone - I felt this not quite up to the standard the rest of the Craft Sequence has set. Mostly it felt a bit draggy before the giant action sequence that was the last quarter of the novel. 84. The Lost Boy by Christina Henry - Purportedly the origin story of Captain Hook, it's the latest in a series of Peter Pan rewrites that recognize that kids are basically assholes. This book is brutal but really shallow. Fairly compelling read but otherwise meh. 85. God's Trombones by James Weldon Johnson - Subtitled "Seven Negro Sermons in Verse" this book, written in 1927, takes seven common sermons in black churches and sets them to verse, and hence is my poetry book for the year. I feel like the verse is really nice here for giving you a sense of the cadence and how a better idea of how these might have been preached. The most interesting I thought was the Prodigal Son which was preached somewhat differently than I'd ever heard it. Some of these do get down into old timey fire and brimstone. Would generally recommend. 86. The Sympathizer by Viet Thanh Nguyen - My Wildcard (gotten from the Goodreads thread). A North Vietnamese spy's confession. This was a really interesting novel. MOst of what I know about Vietnam focuses on the American experience, to see it from the Vietnamese side was good, even more so to see it from both the North and South side. This was good. 1) Read some books. Set a number and go hog wild. 86/60 2) Of the books you read this year, make sure at least 20% of them are written by women. 35/17 3) Of the books you read this year, make sure at least 20% of them are written by someone non-white. 29/17 4) Read at least one book by an LGBT author. - Taste of Honey 5) Read at least one TBB BoTM and post in the monthly thread about it. - Mother Night 6) Read a book someone else in the thread recommends (a wildcard!) - The Sympathizer 7) Read something that was recently published (anything from after 1st January 2016). - Umami 8) Read something which was published before you were born. Grendel 9) Read something in translation. - The Story of My Teeth 10) Read something from somewhere you want to travel. - Man Tiger 11) Read something political - No Knives in the Kitchens of this City 12) Read something historical. - For All the Tea in China 12a) Read something about the First World War. - Her Privates We 13) Read something biographical. - The Egg and I 14) Read some poetry. - God's Trombones 15) Read a play. - For colored girls who have considered suicide/When the rainbow is enuf 16) Read a collection of short stories. - Natural History of Hell 17) Read something long (500+ pages). - Stiletto 18) Read something which was banned or censored. - Lolita 19) Read a satire. - Blackass 20) Read something about honour. - Chronicle of a Death Foretold 21) Read something about fear- The Changeling 22) Read something about one (or more!) of the seven sins. - Get Carter 23) Read something that you love. - The Shipping News 24) Read something from a non-human perspective. - Memoirs of a Polar Bear
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Nov 1, 2017 16:56
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