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Franchescanado posted:I've read Lot 49 a couple of times now, mainly due to it being so short. I'm ready for a re-read of V. Lot 49 is the only Pynchon I've read. Any suggestions as to where to go next?
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Oct 25, 2018 16:25
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Ben Nevis posted:Lot 49 is the only Pynchon I've read. Any suggestions as to where to go next? I had gotten Inherent Vice as a more intermediary book after trying to get started on GR a few times over the years and thought it was really great for that. As a bonus there's the really well done (and masterfully casted) PTA movie you can watch afterward. Honestly though Gravity's Rainbow is fantastic. It has a reputation for being challenging but honestly after some bouncing around in the first hundred pages or so it starts to settle into a specific narrative and gets easier to follow. It is long though of course, and dense, so just be preprared for that. I was actually going to ask if anyone (Franchescanado specifically since he had brought up V.) had a recommendation between Mason & Dixon, Vineland, and V. Those seem to be the ones talked about a lot after GR and Lot.
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Oct 25, 2018 16:56
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Ben Nevis posted:Lot 49 is the only Pynchon I've read. Any suggestions as to where to go next? If you want something fun and lighter, then I'd say Inherent Vice. Pynchon has what some call the "California trilogy", (Inherent Vice, Vineland, Lot 49) which tend to be more fun and lighter. It's probably my favorite novel. If you're interested in something more sprawling and epic, then I'd say V. or Gravity's Rainbow. Guy A. Person posted:I had gotten Inherent Vice as a more intermediary book after trying to get started on GR a few times over the years and thought it was really great for that. As a bonus there's the really well done (and masterfully casted) PTA movie you can watch afterward. Depends on what you want. If you like GR and Lot 49, I'd say say V., because it's the perfect in-between to those two novels, and it's wonderful and exciting and has some of my favorite Pynchon characters. Mason & Dixon is closer to Gravity's Rainbow and Against the Day. It's epic and weird, but many say it's his most emotionally sincere and fulfilling (personally I think Inherent Vice does this better). Vineland is good, but it's bloated and my least favorite Pynchon novel. It is, however, technically a sequel to both Lot 49 and Inherent Vice, as it makes up one third of his "California" trilogy. Bleeding Edge is good too, but I'm much less interested in the exploration of modern technology and the internet age and the dot com bubble than I am with the subjects of his other novels. It's still fun seeing him use his pulse on pop culture when writing in an era obsessed with it. For both of you, I'd also recommend Slow Learner, which is his short story collection. It's only five(?) stories, but three of them are great and the introduction, which finds Pynchon at his most candid, is excellent.
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Oct 25, 2018 18:06
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Franchescanado posted:For both of you, I'd also recommend Slow Learner, which is his short story collection. It's only five(?) stories, but three of them are great and the introduction, which finds Pynchon at his most candid, is excellent. Oh this is rad, and probably what I'll check out next. Thanks!
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Oct 25, 2018 18:08
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2018 Reading Challenge Theme Week #16 - Challenge no. 21: Read something that involves Maslow's hierarchy of needs. Oh hey, one or two more of these left in the year! Then it's basically smooth sailing. I made this challenge trying to be clever but really when I have been thinking about it more it's super broad. How many books aren't about survival, or finding friends/acceptance, or learning about yourself, etc. Probably like, books about car repair mostly. Anyway, read a book that involves one of the needs, or something inspired by the actual philosophy, or just Maslow's book. It would also be cool to hear which need it deals with or how you decided on it. I am going to read Siddhartha for self-actualization/transcendence. It's been on my list for awhile and fit the bill! Bonus challenge: Read something about hunger As other posters have cleverly recommended you can read Hunger by Knut Hamsen or Hunger by Roxane Gay or just anything related to hunger. For this challenge I am going to read Salt Sugar Fat by Michael Moss. Not like, immediately, but soon!
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Oct 25, 2018 19:30
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For basic Maslow, I'd count The Cove by Cynan Jones about a man lost at sea in a kayak. As you might imagine it there's a fair bit about the need for the basics in the hierarchy. Jones is characteristically terse, it clocks in at 85ish heavily formatted pages with as many spare words as he could excised. You can knock it out over lunch if you wanted. I still found it to be impactful. For Hunger, I searched the library catalog for books with that in the title and settled on Hunger Makes Me a Modern Girl by Carrie Brownstein of Sleater-Kinney and Portlandia fame. The focus is primarily on her growing up and her career in Sleater-Kinney. As to the hunger mentioned, a focus of the book is definitely Brownstein's hunger for attention, or maybe just acknowledgement.
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Oct 25, 2018 21:02
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I ended up reading two books about hunger unintentionally. The first was The Devourers by Indra Das, which I picked up randomly at the library because I liked the cover and thought, gay werewolves in India why not (though it was a bit too gorey for my tastes). The second was the one I picked up for another challenge, read a book published the same year you were born. I picked Flounder but Günter Grass, even though it was the pub date for the English translation, because it looked the most interesting. Ended up getting a first edition at the library (not a popular book to take out I guess) so ended up with a book literally as old as I am, which was kinda cool. Anyway, it ended up being about food, food, sex, feminism, and food. It was a seriously good book though. I guess next year I'm gonna have to pick up The Tin Drum. Also thanks for the rec in the Shameless thread, Guy. Blindness is next on my reading list.
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Oct 25, 2018 22:55
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No problemo. Glad I waited because I'm almost certainly not going to get through Moby Dick before the end of the year with my current backlog
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Oct 25, 2018 23:48
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I read Cooked by Michael Pollan, which now also has a Netflix series. It's a relatively interesting history of cooking interspersed with the author learning how to cook with each of the four elements. I'd say if you like the Netflix show, the book is a nice companion. I bailed on the Booklord when I realized that I had only read like, 5 books by June. I'm still likely going to hit 20, but not my originally planned 40, and I barely did any challenges. First failed Booklord in a few years.
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Oct 31, 2018 03:12
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I completely stopped reading from May until late July, so I'm not going to hit my target by reading normal books. I do have a bunch of what are essentially short stories from the Digital Library of Korean Literature. They all have different ISBNs, so they're books, right? They're something like 15-50 pages each, so I could plow through them very quickly. Is this cheating, however, or against the spirit of the challenge? I guess my real goal at this point is to knock out the challenges I have left, with some bonuses on the way.
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Oct 31, 2018 06:54
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quote:
I read nine books in October. But my numbers are slipping, diversity-wise. I need to correct this. 44 - The Adventure Zone: Here Be Gerblins, by Clint McElroy, Griffin McElroy, Justin McElroy, Travis McElroy and Carey Pietsch. Adaption of the first story arc of the hugely popular D&D podcast. It's been long enough since I first listened to TAZ that I'd forgotten a lot of the smaller details and funny/cool moments from this first arc, so I was pleasantly surprised by a lot of this. Translating an audio story to avisual medium means that characters and locations get given "canon" appearances, and while these don't match the Merle, Taako and Magnus in my mind's eye, they're close enough and expressive enough that I didn't find the adaption jarring. I'm really glad this finally came out, and it was a much-needed pick-me-up for this month. Really hoping they continue to adapt the rest of the podcast, because there are some wild things down the road that I'd love to see fleshed out. 45 - Valley Of The Dolls, by Jacqueline Suzann. A cult classic that I started out really hating, but around halfway through started to properly win me over. The prose is purple, the language outdated (and often really grossly offensive with how it throws F-slurs around), but Susann did something really impressive with this book. She took what I thought would be generic archetype characters and tracked them through the years, through rises and falls, and made me genuinely care about what happened. The book is somewhere between a soap opera and a high showbiz melodrama, but with some moments of absolute fury and righteous bitterness at the core. I don't know what rating to give this, given how much of it put me off, and how much of it drew me back in. But I'm very glad I finally got to reading it, and everything else I learn about the background of the book and the author herself make me like it, and her, a little more. 46 - Kim & Kim vol. 1, by Magdalene Visaggio, Eva Cabrera, Claudia Aguirre. High-octane and delightfully silly comic series about two interdimensional bounty hunters. It's colourful, queer, and full of personality. Even among the absurdity, the story is grounded by the leads' relationship and an authentic emotional core. Tonally this feels like a spiritual successor to classic Tank Girl, with a little Saga mixed in. I really dug it. 47 - Mortal Engines, by Philip Reeve. Post-apocalypse YA novel set in a grim future where the world's towns and cities roam across the blighted Earth as enormous scavengers. I was excited for the worldbuilding in this book, and Reeve does not disappoint, with some really endearing quirks and cargo-cult interpretations of "Ancient" culture and technology. The allegory is laid on thickly in the novel's setting and narrative, but I was rarely dissatisfied - honestly it's nice to see a story like this pull so few punches in depicting the "future" London elite's culture of predation and powermongering at any cost. My only disappointment is that I didn't get round to reading this when I was the target audience, because teenage me would have loved it. 48 - Weird Al: The Book, by Nathan Rabin & Al Yankovic. A light and pleasant biography interspersed with photos, quotations and other goofs from Al himself. There are a few gems in here, like learning that Al's manager Jay Levey got his start working with Timothy Leary. Unfortunately the way the book is laid out is rather unsatisfying: Each long chapter is an unbroken string of paragraphs, which doesn't give major events or statements any room to breathe. This also means that a sentence can be broken up by two or three pages of photos or tweets, further spoiling the flow. The book kind of feels like one enormous magazine article. That said, I didn't dislike any of the content, and as a long-time fan I enjoyed all of the behind-the-scenes stuff. 49 - Saga, vol. 9, by Fiona Staples & Brian K. Vaughan. Saga is still superb, and things are only getting more intense. A lot of violence, bloodshed, and fraugh personal politics in this one. Bloody hell. 1. Set a goal for number of books or another personal challenge - 52 - 49 2. Of the books you read this year, make sure at least 1/3 of them are not written by men. - 19 - 4, 5, 8, 11, 13, 14, 15, 16, 18, 20, 23, 24, 30, 32, 34, 35, 40, 45, 46 — bonus: Of these make sure half are by authors new to you - 13 - 4, 5, 8, 11, 13, 15, 16, 23, 24, 32, 40, 45, 46 3. Of the books you read this year, make sure at least 1/3 of them are written by someone non-white. - 15 - 5, 6, 11, 12, 18, 19, 24, 25, 27, 28, 30, 32, 38, 39, 41 — bonus: Of these make sure half are by authors new to you - 10 - 5, 6, 11, 12, 19, 24, 25, 32, 39, 41 — bonus: Make sure 10% of the books you read this year are by LGBT authors 6. Ask another poster to issue you a wildcard, then read it. - 'Crying of Lot 49' — bonus: Similarly, get a wildcard from another thread in this forum - 'The Elementals' 7. Get a recommendation from a friend or loved one. — bonus: Read literally the first in-person book recommendation you get in 2018 (solicited or not) - 'Redshirts' (suggested by flatmate). — bonus: Read a book written/published the exact year you were born — bonus: Read something that wins an award in 2018, but only after it is announced (i.e. don't apply retroactively) — bonus: Read something that isn't in your primary language — 14. Read a play. — bonus: Read a play first published in the last 10 years — bonus: Read a major religious text — bonus: Read something narrated in the 2nd person — bonus: Read something currently banned, censored, or challenged in its country of origin — bonus: Read something about a genre of music you're explicitly not a fan of
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Nov 2, 2018 15:14
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Ben Nevis posted:66. Vengeance by Zachary Lazar It was a good month here, challenge-wise. I read my wild card and a book about music, so that's just a 2nd person book and a banned book left. Everything else was just sort of marking time. I'm on the list for the last two books to knock out my challenges (and a third for a Bonus, that's iffy though). Unfortunately the books weren't all that great this month. The good ones were good, but I had 3 that fell sorta flat for me, and that's above average. On the upside Her Body and Other Parties was as good as advertised, and while I haven't yet, I'm almost certainly going to hit bonus 13 the hard way. I finished this and realized the total didn't synch with Goodreads. After some investigating, I found that I had two 62s so, I'm starting this at 74 to account for that. Also, I'd apparently left off 2 books from previous months, I'm putting them in at 81 and 82. They should have been in in May and August, but some goodreads date errors made me overlook them initially. 74. A Simple Habana Melody: (from when the world was good) by Oscar Hijuelos - My music book. The intent here was to read The Mambo Kings Sing Songs of Love, but that's apparently lost within the library somewhere. So sure, I grabbed another music-y book by the same guy. So it follows Israel, and the great (unconsummated) love of his life Rita. As the composer of many popular light operas and the international sensation Rosas Puras, Israel gets to travel around. So you get to see the musician's view of the Cuban revolution and the building up to WW2 in Paris. Also, despite never hooking up with Rita, he does have a giant dong, which he uses on a number of prostitutes. There's some good stuff here, it just never comes together. Also the frequency with which the giant dong is mentioned is a bit weird. 75. The City of Lost Fortunes by Brian Camp - In a post-Katrina New Orleans, Jude lays low because he has trouble controlling his magic. It swelled with the storm surge and now it's uncomfortable to even be around people. He's found though when an old debt is called in and suddenly finds himself forced into hunting down whomever killed the city's God of Fortune. I was hoping for something along the lines of Sean Stewart's Galveston, but this isn't quite that. It was still a pretty good read. Brisk and interesting. 76. I'll Be Gone in the Dark by Michelle McNamara - October's BOTM, this details the search for the Golden State Killer, and specifically McNamara's personal obsession and search for the killer. This was a good book if you like that crime thing or are interested in the people who obsess over cold cases. 77. The Dosadi Experiment by Frank Herbert - This was rec'd in the genre thread on the basis of a court system where you can win by killing the other lawyer and different ways of going about it constituted precedent. That was like maybe 1/4 of the book. It wasn't bad, but it flopped in relation to the recommendation. 78. The Hangman's Daughter by Oliver Pötzsch - This is an oddly named book, as it's mostly about a hangman and a town doctor try and solve a crime to save an innocent woman accused of witchcraft before a full blown witch panic overtakes the town. The daughter is not even close to a focal point or really even a main character. At any rate, the titular hangman was apparently based of Pötzsch's ancestor. The historical aspect is interesting. The conflict between towns over shipping rights, etc, all adds a nice flavor to it. The mystery at the heart of this thing is basically rubbish though and easily figured out before the halfway point. I wish this were better, but it's more middling. 79. Space and Place: The Perspective of Experience by Yi-Fu Tuan - Here the author breaks down how people experience Space, by which he means generic spaces and areas, and Place, by which he means meaningful places, like home, country, etc. It gets sort of mystical early on, but the thoughts towards the end about what makes places meaningful was definitely thought provoking and enjoyable. 80. Her Body and Other Parties by Carmen Maria Machado - I'd seen a lot of recs floating around, in the Lit thread and Horror thread, so grabbed this as a Halloween read. I'm glad I did, because it's real good. Sitting at the intersection of fairy tale, sci-fi, horror, and just plain literature, these stories focus on women's relations, with each other, with their bodies, and with the world at large. They are timely, and good. You should definitely read this 81. Armistice by Laura Ellen Donnelly - Actually read in May, this is the 2nd book of the Amberlough series, this primarily follows Ari and Cordelia in exile/on the run and drills down on some Ospie foreign relations stuff. This was maybe not quite up to the first but was still really good, and I'm looking forward to the third in 2019. 82. Record of a Spaceborn Few by Becky Chambers - The third of the Wayfarers novels, this focuses on the portions of humanity that still reside on the initial generation ships that brought people from Earth. As you might expect there's a few intersecting storylines and they flesh out what these ships and humanities past mean to them now. There's something about this series that I just love. It's hard to pin down, but I'm tempted to say it's the humanity of it all. 1. Set a goal for number of books or another personal challenge - 79/80 2. Of the books you read this year, make sure at least 20% of them are written by women. 30 — bonus: Of these make sure half are by authors new to you: 24 3. Of the books you read this year, make sure at least 20% of them are written by someone non-white. 23 — bonus: Of these make sure half are by authors new to you: 20 4. Read at least one book by an LGBT author. - The Merry Spinster — bonus: Make sure 10% of the books you read this year are by LGBT authors 5. Participate in the TBB BotM thread at least once in 2018 (thread stickied each month at the top of the forum). - Lincoln in the Bardo — bonus: Participate in the SHAMEFUL The Greatest Books You've Never Read thread 6. Ask another poster to issue you a wildcard, then read it. - Space and Place — bonus: Similarly, get a wildcard from another thread in this forum 7. Get a recommendation from a friend or loved one. — bonus: Read literally the first in-person book recommendation you get in 2018 (solicited or not) - A Man Called Ove 8. Read something written before you were born. — bonus: Read a book written/published the exact year you were born - Going After Cacciato 9. Read a book published in 2018 (or if you're eager to start early, the latter half of 2017). - The Night Market — bonus: Read something that wins an award in 2018, but only after it is announced (i.e. don't apply retroactively) 10. Read something translated from another language. - For Isabel, A Mandala — bonus: Read something that isn't in your primary language 11. Read something political. - 300 Main Street — bonus: Read something political from/about a country you aren't from and don't currently live in - Frankenstein in Baghdad 12. Read a poetry collection. - Blackacre — bonus: Read poems by at least 10 different poets 13. Read a collection of short stories. - Dreams of Falling and Flying — bonus: Read short stories by at least 10 different authors - 9 14. Read a play. — bonus: Read a play first published in the last 10 years - Vanya and Sonya and Masha and Spike 15. Read something involving history. — bonus: Read something about a (nonfictional) war that didn't involve the U.S. - The Opium War 16. Read something biographical. - Eat the Apple — bonus: Read something biographical about someone you've met/seen in person 17. Read something about religion. - The Marvellous Equations of the Dread — bonus: Read a major religious text 18. Read something from a non-traditional perspective. — bonus: Read something narrated in the 2nd person 19. Read something that has been banned, censored, or challenged. — bonus: Read something currently banned, censored, or challenged in its country of origin 20. Read something about music. — bonus: Read something about a genre of music you're explicitly not a fan of - A Simple Habana Melody 21. Read something that involves Maslow's hierarchy of needs. — bonus: Read something about hunger - Hunger Makes Me a Modern Girl 22. Read something about the future. - Punch Escrow — bonus: Read something about a future that takes place before the current year
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Nov 2, 2018 17:30
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October~ 75. How to Build a Girl - Caitlin Moran 76. Uprooted - Naomi Novik 77. The Known World - Edward P. Jones 78. The Turner House - Angela Flournoy 79. Bridge of Clay - Markus Zusak 80. Throne of the Crescent Moon - Saladin Ahmed Not gonna lie, a semi-slow month, but The Known World is a very good novel about slavery - and black slave owners - and Throne of the Crescent Moon is a pretty fun Arabian fantasy novel with djinns and ghuls. Bridge of Clay is Zusak's followup to his huge hit The Book Thief, and it isn't quite as good. It's still affecting and well-done, but doesn't quite pack the punch of its predecessor. Still need to read a collection of poetry - do yall think I could do one large poem (i.e. the Inferno or Keats' Endymion) rather than a collection? Cause that's where I'm currently looking. 1. Set a goal for number of books or another personal challenge (80/36) 2. Of the books you read this year, make sure at least 20% of them are written by women. - Moran, Novik, Flournoy 3. Of the books you read this year, make sure at least 20% of them are written by someone non-white. - Jones, Flournoy, Ahmed 4. 5. 6. 7. 8. 9. Read a book published in 2018 (or if you're eager to start early, the latter half of 2017). - Bridge of Clay 10. 11. 12. Read a poetry collection. 13. 14. 15. 16. 17. 18. 19. 20. 21. 22.
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Nov 2, 2018 19:59
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Wow, I've really been slacking on my updates. Here's my August, September, and October. 31. The Shadow of the Torturer, by Gene Wolfe. Heard so much about these books, but wasn't terribly impressed by this first offering. Severian is a punk, but Urth is awesome and I read the next book because I wanted to see more of the setting. 32. The Descent of Monsters, by JY Yang. A closer look at one aspect of JY Yang's awesome setting. Told in journal entries and letters. I really enjoyed this different style. Too bad Yang is done with the setting, at least as far as I know. 33. Crime and Punishment, by Fyodor Dostoevsky. Pretty fantastic. My second Dostoevsky, after The Idiot. While I think I liked The Idiot more, C&P offers a hugely different tale. Instead of witnessing a saint from the outside, we instead witness a devil from the inside. I thought that too much of Raskolnikov's life depended on spending women as currency, and the ending was a little strange compared to the rest of the book. 34. Amberlough, by Lara Elena Donnelly. This was pretty nice, especially for a debut. Donnelly's setting is grimy and gritty and great. Her characters really pop and spend the whole book being awful to one another even though they love one another. Kind of heartbreaking, but very enjoyable. 35. Rejoice, A Knife to the Heart, by Steven Erikson. My boy Erikson wrote a serious sci-fi novel. And it was... Okay. It was deeply, deeply political, with Trump, Rupert Murdoch, and Elon Musk analogues. The story at the heart of the book, about the sci-fi novelist abducted by aliens, would have made a great novella. But the book gets padded out with these vignettes of tons of different people, most of which are really hard to care about. Frustrating, but not too bad. 36. The Claw of the Conciliator, by Gene Wolfe. A bit more of the same as Shadow, but with a little more scenery. Severian is very lovely in this one. The episodic nature of Severian's tale can be kind of exhausting as well as it is thrilling. 37. Star Trek Voyager: The Architects of Infinity, by Kirsten Beyer. My first foray into the Voyager novels is also the most recently released one. So I missed a lot of the little continuities about what Voyager's been up to since it made it back to the Alpha Quadrant at the end of the TV show. Turns out these things are written to where that doesn't matter a huge deal. I almost really liked this one, but the plot armor for the main characters took out a lot of the suspense of the climax. 38. The Mother of All Questions, by Rebecca Solnit. I love Solnit's writing style and her sense of humor. Very dry, wry and witty, which is exactly my style. And it seems like she uses humor in much the same way I do: to cut through some of the existential dread of life on earth. Some of Solnit's essays here are very much of the moment they were written. It would be interesting for her to update some in the wake of the Kavanaugh hearings. My favorite essay surprised me. It was a feminist review and examination of the movie Giant. Solnit's writing made it seem like a sprawling beautiful movie and left me with a very positive view. 39. The Sword of the Lictor, by Gene Wolfe. There were some really very striking scenes in this one, that I think will stick with me for a while. Wolfe's writing has really grown on me, as has the setting of Urth, which is still kind of a mystery at this point. Excited to wrap this thing up and maybe figure out what the hell any of it means. 40. A Marxist Education, by Wayne Au. A fascinating look into what Au takes away from Karl Marx, Lev Vygotsky, and Paolo Freire. Au details the theories of these three men in a way that allowed me to grasp the concepts much better than I have by reading the source material. It was very enlightening to see how his research has shaped his teaching methods. And also just the fact that he proudly calls himself a Marxist in a field where tenure and reputation are everything. I also learned finally exactly why charter schools are so damaging, instead of just nodding along whenever someone said they were. 41. Star Trek TNG: Cold Equations: The Persistence of Memory, by David Mack. I bought this one a long time ago for 99 cents and then never got into it because I realized I hated David Mack. Well, a surprise trip left me with few book options and way too much time to not have books. So, this one was still sitting on my Kindle. And I almost loving liked it. But then Mack spent a huge chunk of the book in the first person, present tense perspective of the irascible Noonien Soong, a thoroughly unpleasant character. This was made worse by switching to this perspective after a pretty entertaining beginning section which involved a mystery and a covert operation involving the Enterprise-E's finest officers. I swore off David Mack books for a reason and I'm sorry I read this one. 42. Difficult Women, by Roxanne Gay. Phew, this is a tough book. Gay does not pull any punches and does not shy away from showing sexual assault and violence and emotional abuse. There are a lot of stories and they're all fairly short, but they are all heavy. I'm glad I read this. I think it's very easy, especially for men, to turn away from the very real and all too common traumas women face in the patriarchy. And so to meet these stories' unwavering and piercing gaze and come out the other side makes me feel like a better person. But yeah. Definitely a tough one. Goals 1. 42/50 Books Read. 2. %Women Authors: 40% 3. %Authors of Color: 33.3% 4. LGBTQIA+ Author: Yes: The Black Tides of Heaven, by JY Yang. 5. TBB BotM Participation: Yes: The Sign of Four, by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle. 6. Wildcard: Yes: A Question of Power, by Bessie Head.
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Nov 5, 2018 02:53
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October! 53. A Memory of Light. Robert Jordan, Brandon Sanderson. After fourteen books, the WoT had a better ending than I thought it was possible. Most plots were closed and some right by the end. If only, some characters felt off and some stuff was rushed, but it was very entertaining. 54. Neuromancer. Willian Gibson. It's always a pleasure to read this book, the weird language and the almost nonsensical images are just part of the mixture that pulls you into the matrix. Awesome. 55. Goblin Slayer Vol 1. Kumo Kagyu. Okay, this one was really brutal. Still, it doesn't seem to relish on that brutality, fortunately. Also, I think the protagonist is Batman if his family was killed by goblins... which actually happened, then he's Batman if Batman lived in a generic fantasy world. 56. Horns. Joe Hill. This is a pretty nice and direct book, with an intriguing story and compelling characters with flaws as humans should be. Too bad the second part got boring after the really nice first part. 1. Set a goal for number of books or another personal challenge: (56/60) — bonus: Of these make sure half are by authors new to you — bonus: Of these make sure half are by authors new to you — bonus: Make sure 10% of the books you read this year are by LGBT authors (6/6) 5. Participate in the TBB BotM thread at least once in 2018 (thread stickied each month at the top of the forum). — bonus: Participate in the SHAMEFUL The Greatest Books You've Never Read thread 6. Ask another poster to issue you a wildcard, then read it. — bonus: Similarly, get a wildcard from another thread in this forum — bonus: Read literally the first in-person book recommendation you get in 2018 (solicited or not) — bonus: Read a book written/published the exact year you were born — bonus: Read something that wins an award in 2018, but only after it is announced (i.e. don't apply retroactively) — bonus: Read something political from/about a country you aren't from and don't currently live in — bonus: Read poems by at least 10 different poets — bonus: Read short stories by at least 10 different authors 14. Read a play. — bonus: Read a play first published in the last 10 years — bonus: Read something about a (nonfictional) war that didn't involve the U.S. — bonus: Read something biographical about someone you've met/seen in person — bonus: Read a major religious text — bonus: Read something narrated in the 2nd person — bonus: Read something currently banned, censored, or challenged in its country of origin 20. Read something about music. — bonus: Read something about a genre of music you're explicitly not a fan of — bonus: Read something about hunger — bonus: Read something about a future that takes place before the current year
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Nov 9, 2018 20:10
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Oh I owe you guys one final challenge week. Let's just call it this and next week since people will have extra (or paradoxically less) time to read over the Thanksgiving holiday. 2018 Reading Challenge Theme Week #17 - Challenge no. 9: Read a book published in 2018 (or if you're eager to start early, the latter half of 2017). Waited till late because, well, there's more books published at this point. I may have actually read one or two more (and will likely read another one or two before EOY) but I definitely specifically just read Murakami's new one, Killing Commendatore. It was okay if you are a Murakami fan, if you're less of a fan it's pretty redundant to his earlier work (which everyone probably already knows based on the rest of his oeuvre). I feel like nobody else really writes like him tho so I don't mind getting his specific type of novel every few years when I read him. Bonus challenge: Read something that wins an award in 2018, but only after it is announced (i.e. don't apply retroactively) Stuporstar pointed out this was difficult if you're getting library books because once something wins it tends to get a ton of interest. But well, it is a bonus challenge and I meant these to be kind of hard anyway, so no regrets. I recently read a Maryse Conde (winner of the Nobel replacement created for this year) book called I, Tituba, Black Witch of Salem. Knowing details about the trials themselves helped a lot (I read a book last year about them) but honestly it was still enjoyable throughout. -- The remaining challenges are personal challenges or like "read a bunch of books by women or non-white people" or your wildcard, etc. so not a ton of reasons for dedicated weeks. These were also just a way to get more discussion/recommendations out there and at this point you have a 10 page thread to dig through to see what other people read for any challenges you may be stuck on, or just flat out ask. Also we are in the home stretch so it's probably pretty obvious what you need to do to read enough to satisfy your own conditions for your challenge. I had a blast doing these, and am looking forward to seeing how people liked this years challenge. Happy reading as always!
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Nov 14, 2018 20:35
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Whoops I don't think I posted my October. Also I'm pretty sure I won't complete a couple of challenges this year. "Read something that isn't in your primary language" is pretty much impossible, and I really don't think I'll read either of my wildcard offerings from this thread, sadly. One was Henry James, who I don't really care for, and the other is way too depressing for me right now. Though a lot of books are too depressing for me right now, as my November reads will probably reveal. 77. The Supernatural Enhancements - Edgar Cantero - This is a real oddball of a book, it starts out implying heavily it'll be one genre and then kind of takes a different tack than you might expect. Also devotes multiple pages more than once to discussions of cryptography, which was pretty fun and interesting but functionally not necessary to the book. Overall I really enjoyed it, though it's certainly unique. 78. The Left Hand of Darkness - Ursula K. LeGuin - This was my first time reading this classic of sci-fi, and it was quite good. I admit I didn't expect the back half of the book to be so... travelogue-y, and I wish it had spent more time on the culture and politics of Gethen, but it was still a very good book. I'm curious about some of the choices LeGuin made (like referring to the people of Gethen as "he" even though they explicitly don't have binary gender) and I guess she wrote a paper on what she would have done differently later in her career, I might have to track that down. 79. Skeleton Crew - Stephen King - It's said a lot in various threads on SA that King is better short. I'd generally agree, and this is one of the better short story collections (Night Shift is also good, if I remember correctly). There are some really good stories in this collection, though of course I've already forgotten the names of most of them. 80. City of Blades - Robert Jackson Bennett - Pretty good middle book of the Divine Cities trilogy. I don't think I enjoyed it quite as much as the first, but it was cool to see more of this unique world. I've since read the third book, which I feel was a big improvement over this one. 81. Something Wicked This Way Comes - Ray Bradbury - I love Bradbury. I love his writing, and this is one of his best, in my opinion. I sometimes just pull his books off the shelf and read through a few sentences because every once in a while you hit a really beautiful passage. Also it's a great read for right around Halloween. 82. Long Way to a Small, Angry Planet - Becky Chambers - This was a great, cozy, breezy sci-fi novel, and it's exactly what I wanted. Nothing about the book was that revolutionary or innovative, really, but it was still a fun, relaxing read (and boy did I need a few of those). 83. The Black Tides of Heaven - JY Yang - This one has been recommended a lot, in part due to it being a Hugo or Nebula nom for best novella (I think). I was a little disappointed in it-- it presents some really cool ideas, and had some engaging moments, but overall it was kind of an abrupt book that didn't have the strongest writing, IMO. I'm still curious enough to read the second one, but I didn't enjoy it as much as I expected. Challenges remaining 1. Set a goal for number of books or another personal challenge: 83/70 6. Ask another poster to issue you a wildcard, then read it. — bonus: Read something that isn't in your primary language 17. Read something about religion. — bonus: Read a major religious text
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Nov 14, 2018 20:58
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This looks like a thread that gets a lot of diverse traffic, so I'm going to go ahead and plug the 2018 Book Barn Secret Santa. Check out the thread to ask questions or sign up.
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Nov 15, 2018 16:45
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Yes! Good call. I have been trying to use this thread to promote cross thread participation anyway. I don't know if it's actually been working tho because I only frequent 3 or 4 threads in the forum, ironically and shamefully.
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Nov 15, 2018 17:04
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Guy A. Person posted:Oh I owe you guys one final challenge week. Let's just call it this and next week since people will have extra (or paradoxically less) time to read over the Thanksgiving holiday. For non-awarded 2018 books, the winner for me is probably The Mutual UFO Network by Lee Martin. They're short stories that gracefully demonstrate tensions in families and communities that have reached the breaking point.
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Nov 15, 2018 18:09
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Oh man I totally intended to do an announcement when the Book Award was announced, but I got drunk with work colleagues instead. Whoops!
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Nov 15, 2018 18:26
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quote:
In November, I read eight books: 50 - Bright Lights, Big City, by Jay McInerney. Written entirely in the second person, this quirk actually lends more immediacy to the book than I had expected. It's a very, very mid-80s novel, full of cocaine, decaying urban sprawl and insecure straight masculinity. It's almost quaint, but I warmed to McInerney's prose and the small but emotionally rich story. There were some turns of phrase and maxims scattered through the book that were surprisingly profound, and by the ending I felt a real catharsis. An unexpectedly good read. 51 - Redshirts, by John Scalzi. A suggestion from my flatmate, I finally got round to reading it 11 months later. It's good! What starts as a knowing deconstruction of classic Star Trek-style tropes and foibles quickly morphs into a more compelling and personality-filled story. Scalzi surprised me with how empathtic his storytelling became, especially in the final third of the book. 52 & 53 - Pluto, vol. 5 & 6, by Naoki Urasawa. Continues to be one of the best manga series I've ever read - great pacing, beautiful art, and a real emotional core. 54 - The Hate U Give, by Angie Thomas. drat, I can see why this was such a huge hit. It's an intense, emotional story about prejudice, violence and trying to exist as a young person under America's vicious culture of racism. Some of the best scenes are set in the daily home life of the protagonist, Starr, and the contrast between the "normal" ideas of what her childhood should be and the grim realities she has to face are rendered very well. Running through it is a core of righteous anger and a yearning for humanity to be better, and I can't help but resonate with that. 55 - Not Your Sidekick, by C.B. Lee. YA novel about a wannabe superhero who's grown up without any powers of her own. I wish I liked this more - it's sweet, it's endearing, it's got great queer and trans representation, the protagonist and her family's Vietnamese heritage is explored, and the central plot is fun. But it's all very easy: plot twists that are easy for the reader to figure out are stretched out for chapters before resolving exactly as predicted, and at no point did I find myself being genuinely excited or surprised by what was happening. The post-apocalypse setting surprised me and didn't really amount to that much in the grand scheme of things, aside from explaining why the world seems so small. I didn't dislike it, and I'm glad that younger audiences can pick up this book about a bisexual Asian-American teen who wants superpowers and falls in love and has a cool trans friend. I want more books like this in the world. 56 - Apple Quest Monsters DX, by Splendidland (Samanthuel Gillson). A delightful and charming art book inspired by game manuals of old, this collection features a bestiary of monsters from the fictional videogame setting of Pommeland. Each monster has its own bio, and there's a great amount of love and care poured into each page. There's even a sense of progression and climax toward the end of the book which surprised me and made me smile. 57 - Misty, by Arinzé Kene. A playwright struggles against his social conscience while his current work seems to trade in stereotypes. A mixture of dialogue, freestyle rap and poetry, most of what I thought about this play was "drat I'd love to actually see this performed on stage rather than just reading it". What I read, though, was engrossing, thoughtful and introspective. Smashed my raw number target, though I've still got some challenges to mop up. This will be difficult to fit into a busy month, but I'll do my best. 2. Of the books you read this year, make sure at least 1/3 of them are not written by men. - 22 - 4, 5, 8, 11, 13, 14, 15, 16, 18, 20, 23, 24, 30, 32, 34, 35, 40, 45, 46, 54, 55, 56 — bonus: Of these make sure half are by authors new to you - 16 - 4, 5, 8, 11, 13, 15, 16, 23, 24, 32, 40, 45, 46, 54, 55, 56 3. Of the books you read this year, make sure at least 1/3 of them are written by someone non-white. - 20 - 5, 6, 11, 12, 18, 19, 24, 25, 27, 28, 30, 32, 38, 39, 41, 52, 53, 54, 55, 57 — bonus: Of these make sure half are by authors new to you - 13 - 5, 6, 11, 12, 19, 24, 25, 32, 39, 41, 54, 55, 57 — bonus: Make sure 10% of the books you read this year are by LGBT authors 6. Ask another poster to issue you a wildcard, then read it. — bonus: Similarly, get a wildcard from another thread in this forum — bonus: Read a book written/published the exact year you were born — bonus: Read something that isn't in your primary language — — — bonus: Read a major religious text — bonus: Read something about a genre of music you're explicitly not a fan of
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Dec 1, 2018 08:48
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November! Challenge almost finished, need a WILDCARD, please. 57. The Day of the Triffids. John Wyndham. If this was written today, it would be considered a very bad book. Thankfully, it wasn't and it basically setups the basics of the post-apocalyptic genre. Very interesting even if sometimes the story just lost me at a times. 58. Vinland Saga, Omnibus 1. Makoto Yukimura. A take on Nordic legends from a Japanese author with the common tropes of a manga. But those tropes are going down every chapter, si it turns out to be a very interesting representation of history. And the art is great. 59. All Quiet on the Western Front. Erich Maria Remarque. Wow, if I had to describe this book in one word, it would be "soul-crushing", but that's two words and it's ok because life is meaningless. The story is engaging and the character captivating. I won't be reading this again in a while, that's for sure. 60. A Head Full of Ghosts. Paul Tremblay. Not scary at all. It was more like a drama around schizophrenia and pop culture essays. There's was only one fleshed out character and the others were just cartoons. — bonus: Of these make sure half are by authors new to you — bonus: Of these make sure half are by authors new to you — bonus: Make sure 10% of the books you read this year are by LGBT authors (6/6) 5. Participate in the TBB BotM thread at least once in 2018 (thread stickied each month at the top of the forum). — bonus: Participate in the SHAMEFUL The Greatest Books You've Never Read thread 6. Ask another poster to issue you a wildcard, then read it. — bonus: Similarly, get a wildcard from another thread in this forum — bonus: Read literally the first in-person book recommendation you get in 2018 (solicited or not) — bonus: Read a book written/published the exact year you were born — bonus: Read something that wins an award in 2018, but only after it is announced (i.e. don't apply retroactively) — bonus: Read something political from/about a country you aren't from and don't currently live in — bonus: Read poems by at least 10 different poets — bonus: Read short stories by at least 10 different authors 14. Read a play. — bonus: Read a play first published in the last 10 years — bonus: Read something about a (nonfictional) war that didn't involve the U.S. — bonus: Read something biographical about someone you've met/seen in person — bonus: Read a major religious text — bonus: Read something narrated in the 2nd person — bonus: Read something currently banned, censored, or challenged in its country of origin — bonus: Read something about a genre of music you're explicitly not a fan of — bonus: Read something about hunger — bonus: Read something about a future that takes place before the current year
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Dec 3, 2018 04:58
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I don't think the point of all quiet on the western front was that life is meaningless, personally.
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Dec 3, 2018 09:20
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Ben Nevis posted:74. A Simple Habana Melody: (from when the world was good) by Oscar Hijuelos Not the most books this month, just 7. There were two, Death of the Necromancer and Lady Audley's Secret, that took way longer than expected. Challenge-wise I knocked out my banned/challenged book and added another bonus for #9. I've handily beat my number (which was not unexpected) and only have one Challenge left. I've got a few short books queued up, and shouldn't have an issue finishing before the end of the month. 83. The Death of the Necromancer by Martha Wells - Saw recs for this in the genre thread, and I've been enjoying Wells' Murderbot books. In the course of exacting a tediously long revenge against the man who framed his father, our heroes cross paths with a spiritualist who may be a necromancer. Or he may just have access to the destroyed artifacts of said father. Or something else. This wasn't bad, it just somehow didn't all click. For what's a bit of an adventure story, it lacks urgency. Even the various attacks and chases just didn't quite hit for me. A little disappointing. 84. John Woman by Walter Mosely - Was pleasantly surprised to see this on the library shelf. It's an interesting book about a boy who tries to escape a violent past. Also about how history changes things. It gets overly didactic in bits, which is not surprising given the titular character is a professor, but still, it's a step over at times. Otherwise a good read. 85. The Hate U Give by Angie Thomas - A book that was challenged locally for violence. Certainly not at all because it asks whether police should gun down children in the street. It's a moving book that reads as though it may have been written about real people. It does a good job of laying out the basics of racial disparity in law enforcement, racism in schooling, and code switching. The biggest critique is that it's all a little basic. Like you'd have to be pretty head in the sand to know none of this stuff. Then again, you read the Goodreads reviews and see a bunch of chuds saying, "But is't Starr the real racist?" and think maybe it needed to be even more basic. A very good read, would recommend. 86. Bimbos of the Death Sun by Sharyn McCrumb - A murder mystery set at a SFF convention. Like there's a lot to work with there and this could have been a great idea. The weight is definitely on the SFF convention. It's a send up of cons everywhere, but it comes off feeling a bit mean spirited. The mystery is given short shrift. I think this could have been a great concept, but unless you're a dedicated con-goer, I don't really think this was all it could have been. 87. Arcadia by Tom Stoppard - This was an entertaining play with some meditations on science, predictability, and chaotic systems. Apparently the science is a bit off, but if you're coming to a play for science, I dunno. The difficulty of backtracking history in a chaotic system as a complementary read to John Woman from earlier in the month as well. Nice bonus for a BOTM. 88. Lady Audley's Secret by Mary Elizabeth Braddon - Apparently the Victorian times had "sensation novels" which were sort of proto-thrillers, and Lady Audley's Secret was the most well known. I went into this expecting sort of Victorian Gillian Flynn, and maybe it sort of is. Though the emphasis should be more on the Victorian aspect than Ms Flynn. Lord Audley re-marries a very lucky young governess. George Talboys returns a rich man from gold prospecting in Australia and runs into his friend Robert Audley, the nephew of the aforementioned Lord Audley. After a visit to the Audley estate, Talboys disappears. There's hints of black mail, foul play, secret identities, all manner of stuff. That being said, the pacing is more Victorian than you may prefer. For those interested in this sort of thing, it does do a lot to illuminate life in a country estate and shed some light on Victorian norms etc. This was a pretty solid read. Not as enjoyable as I'd hoped, as exciting as it might be for Victorians it's pacing isn't draggier than you might want for modern standards. Still, this wasn't bad. 89. The Friend by Sigrid Nunez - National Book Award winner. The narrator is an author whose mentor unexpectedly commits suicide. In the aftermath, she winds up with his great Dane, Apollo. What follows in a meditation on grief, writing, and dogs. It tends to skip between her day to day life and quotes and ruminations on everything. There's a lot more about the role of writing and authors in society than you might initially anticipate (and this seems to aggravate reviewers who just want 24/7 dog story). In style it reminds me of So Many Olympic Exertions from last year. This was really good. 1. Set a goal for number of books or another personal challenge - 89/80 2. Of the books you read this year, make sure at least 20% of them are written by women. 34 — bonus: Of these make sure half are by authors new to you: 28 3. Of the books you read this year, make sure at least 20% of them are written by someone non-white. 26 — bonus: Of these make sure half are by authors new to you: 22 4. Read at least one book by an LGBT author. - The Merry Spinster — bonus: Make sure 10% of the books you read this year are by LGBT authors 5. Participate in the TBB BotM thread at least once in 2018 (thread stickied each month at the top of the forum). - Lincoln in the Bardo — bonus: Participate in the SHAMEFUL The Greatest Books You've Never Read thread 6. Ask another poster to issue you a wildcard, then read it. - Space and Place — bonus: Similarly, get a wildcard from another thread in this forum 7. Get a recommendation from a friend or loved one. — bonus: Read literally the first in-person book recommendation you get in 2018 (solicited or not) - A Man Called Ove 8. Read something written before you were born. - So Many Olympic Exertions — bonus: Read a book written/published the exact year you were born - Going After Cacciato 9. Read a book published in 2018 (or if you're eager to start early, the latter half of 2017). - The Night Market — bonus: Read something that wins an award in 2018, but only after it is announced (i.e. don't apply retroactively) - The Friend 10. Read something translated from another language. - For Isabel, A Mandala — bonus: Read something that isn't in your primary language 11. Read something political. - Any Man — bonus: Read something political from/about a country you aren't from and don't currently live in - Frankenstein in Baghdad 12. Read a poetry collection. - Blackacre — bonus: Read poems by at least 10 different poets 13. Read a collection of short stories. - Dreams of Falling and Flying — bonus: Read short stories by at least 10 different authors - 9 14. Read a play. - Arcadia — bonus: Read a play first published in the last 10 years - Vanya and Sonya and Masha and Spike 15. Read something involving history. - John Woman — bonus: Read something about a (nonfictional) war that didn't involve the U.S. - The Opium War 16. Read something biographical. - Eat the Apple — bonus: Read something biographical about someone you've met/seen in person 17. Read something about religion. - The Marvellous Equations of the Dread — bonus: Read a major religious text 18. Read something from a non-traditional perspective. — bonus: Read something narrated in the 2nd person 19. Read something that has been banned, censored, or challenged. - The Hate U Give — bonus: Read something currently banned, censored, or challenged in its country of origin 20. Read something about music. — bonus: Read something about a genre of music you're explicitly not a fan of - A Simple Habana Melody 21. Read something that involves Maslow's hierarchy of needs. — bonus: Read something about hunger - Hunger Makes Me a Modern Girl 22. Read something about the future. - Punch Escrow — bonus: Read something about a future that takes place before the current year
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Dec 3, 2018 17:01
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81. Great Expectations - Charles Dickens 82. Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire - J.K. Rowling 83. Selected Poems - Gwendolyn Brooks 84. The Animators - Kayla Rae Whitaker 85. The Bear and the Nightingale - Katherine Arden 86. So You Want to Talk About Race - Ijeoma Oluo 87. The Long Dark Teatime of the Soul - Douglas Adams 88. The Girl in the Tower - Katherine Arden 89. Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix - J.K. Rowling 90. Grant - Ron Chernow Overall, a good month, though with a number of rereads (Potter, I'm looking at you). I finished the booklord challenge with Gwendolyn Brooks's poems (some of which are really spectacular). I knocked a few off the "been on my shelf for ages", with the fairly-fun Douglas Adams and the quite-good The Animators, about two women who are, well, animators, and their friendship. The Winternight books (Arden's) are a fun little fantasy trilogy set in Russia, which is a nice shift from "generic European medieval analog" (Though after this and Uprooted, I'm getting a little sick of the 'plucky girl wins over powerful magician' trope... Howl's Moving Castle has inspired a ton of these books...) Oluo's So You Want to Talk About Race was a book club pick, and I gotta say that while not a whole lot of the information in there was new to me, it was good to see it laid out plainly and clearly in a way that might actually affect people. Finally, Ron Chernow's Grant biography was something that took me months to finish, but as with his Hamilton book, it was a pretty solid and thorough look at someone who's often underappreciated in American history, I really dug it. 1. Set a goal for number of books or another personal challenge (90/36) 2. Of the books you read this year, make sure at least 20% of them are written by women. - Rowling, Brooks, Whitaker, Arden, Oluo (About 30%) 3. Of the books you read this year, make sure at least 20% of them are written by someone non-white. - Oluo, Brooks (About 15%) 4. 5. 6. 7. 8. 9. Read a book published in 2018 (or if you're eager to start early, the latter half of 2017). - Girl in the Tower, So You Want to Talk About Race 10. 11. Read something political. - So You Want to Talk About Race 12. Read a poetry collection. - Selected Poems 13. 14. 15. Read something involving history. - Grant 16. Read something biographical. - Grant 17. 18. 19. 20. 21. 22.
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Dec 4, 2018 18:24
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*clears throat* I have read sixty nine books this year, OP
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Dec 5, 2018 04:33
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Welp, November was definitely a “cotton candy” book month, since it’s typically my busiest month at work. 84. Meddling Kids - Edgar Cantero: This book is by the same author as The Supernatural Enhancements, and is definitely not as good as that one. It’s intended to be Lovecraft meets Scooby Doo (very explicitly), but the book doesn’t ever decide whether it wants to be campy or out-and-out horror, and as a result doesn’t accomplish either end well. The story manages to be both kind of predictable, and have a twist that, while it doesn’t come out of left field, just isn’t that interesting or well motivated. Overall a real dud of a book. It had some fun moments, and Cantero writes pretty breezily, but it’s a book that’s consistently tripped up by it’s one clear conceit. 85. City of Miracles - Robert Jackson Bennett: The resolution of the Divine Cities trilogy. I feel like this one definitely picked up the slack of the second book and ended on a strong note. It still falls prey to some of the genre shortcomings of the other book (occasionally spending too much time on worldbuilding that doesn’t have any relevance to the overall plot or characters) but was a fun read otherwise. It also has the advantage that unlike the second book, which centered around an interesting but ultimately second-string character from the first book, this one has a well-established and familiar character as the main protagonist. My biggest complaint about the trilogy is that it didn’t really need to be a trilogy-- books 2 and 3 both felt like they kind of invented big plot points because the first book resolved itself too cleanly. Not much was foreshadowed from one book to another. 86-92. Walt Longmire books 1-7 - Craig Johnson: Got through a lot of these this month! They’re pretty self-contained mystery novels about a Wyoming sheriff living in a small town with a disproportionately high murder rate. I enjoy these a lot, in part because Longmire reminds me of my grandpa, who was also a cop in a small Great Plains town, and in part because they’re easy reads with fun characters. I blew through a lot of them mostly because I was doing a lot of driving this month, and my library had them on audiobook. I know people in Book Barn are iffy on whether they want to call audiobooks real books, but honestly George Guidall does a pretty good job with these, and I think they might be the best way to experience the books. 93. On Stranger Tides - Tim Powers: This book is ostensibly the source material for both the Monkey Island games and the Pirates of the Caribbean franchise, and I can see why. It’s fun, and definitely established a lot of the modern pirate tropes that have appeared in almost everything that’s followed. The book is a little bland at times, and the characters feel a little lacking, though. Overall it was kind of surprisingly forgettable, though I had fun with it anyway. 94. Ninefox Gambit - Yoon Ha Lee: This was raved about when it came out, and I can see why. It’s an interesting approach to a space opera: in short, there’s a space empire whose soldiers gain magic powers from fighting in geometric formations, powered by the populace’s faith in their calendar. If it sounds batshit insane, it is. This book revels in being straight-up science fantasy, which is kind of refreshing in a sea of sci-fi books that try to play at being scientifically rigorous and failing. The book also drops you right in the middle of things with little explanation, and doesn’t take any more time than necessary to exposit on the world, which I also appreciate, but could certainly be a turnoff for some genre readers. Overall pretty good, and I’m interested to see where the trilogy goes. 95. Artificial Condition - Martha Wells: More adventures of Murderbot! This one was much like the first novella: quick paced, surprisingly funny. The audiobook was bad, bad, bad though. The actor’s delivery was weirdly paced and everybody sounded kind of blase. I switched to just reading it pretty quickly and I’m glad I did. I don’t think I liked this as much as All Systems Red, though. Challenges remaining 1. Set a goal for number of books or another personal challenge: 95/70 6. Ask another poster to issue you a wildcard, then read it. — bonus: Read something that isn't in your primary language 17. Read something about religion. — bonus: Read a major religious text
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Dec 5, 2018 17:50
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A human heart posted:*clears throat* I have read sixty nine books this year, OP Nice...
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Dec 5, 2018 19:18
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MockingQuantum posted:93. On Stranger Tides - Tim Powers: This book is ostensibly the source material for both the Monkey Island games and the Pirates of the Caribbean franchise, and I can see why. It’s fun, and definitely established a lot of the modern pirate tropes that have appeared in almost everything that’s followed. The book is a little bland at times, and the characters feel a little lacking, though. Overall it was kind of surprisingly forgettable, though I had fun with it anyway. Totally with you on this. For something that was in theory right up my alley, this just didn't quite hit it. It's not bad just sort of lifeless.
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Dec 5, 2018 19:26
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Ben Nevis posted:Totally with you on this. For something that was in theory right up my alley, this just didn't quite hit it. It's not bad just sort of lifeless. Yeah exactly. It doesn't help that the MI games and the early Pirates of the Caribbean stuff also managed to find some real charm in the setting, in ways that are unique to their media. It's a style that benefits a lot from some visual flair, which (as much as I liked his writing in other ways) Powers isn't great at in this book.
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Dec 5, 2018 19:35
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Talas posted:November! Challenge almost finished, need a WILDCARD, please. If you've not seen/read it, definitely check out Tony Kushner's Angels In America.
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Dec 8, 2018 01:19
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Gertrude Perkins posted:If you've not seen/read it, definitely check out Tony Kushner's Angels In America.
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Dec 8, 2018 09:03
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Ben Nevis posted:Totally with you on this. For something that was in theory right up my alley, this just didn't quite hit it. It's not bad just sort of lifeless. Powers can be weird like this, I think it's why his books have never really hit BIG despite the fact that he's written some really seminal works. There's something about his writing that doesn't grab your attention even when it *really* should.
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Dec 8, 2018 16:55
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October and NovemberMilt Thompson posted:26 Books as a minimum, under 20% rereads (currently 32 books with 2 rereads) COMPLETED 29. Pachinko by Min-Jin Lee 30. War Games: The Psychology of Combat by Leo Murray 31. If On A Winter's Night A Traveler by Italo Calvino 32. The Fifth Risk by Michael Lewis Pachinko is another book I enjoyed, despite its often unrelenting bleakness. Detailing the lives of Koreans in 20th Century Japan, its principal theme was of shame and of how people cope with it, or fail to. Very good indeed. War Games was a book I only bought because it was incredibly cheap with an interesting concept. Why do soldiers fight? Or perhaps more accurately, how can armies persuade their enemies to stop fighting and surrender or run away? The answer is multi-faceted and I found it surprisingly engaging. Murray divides his book into chapters, each of which examines one of the factors which explains how ordinary men can either be compelled to fight or flee, and most assuredly not war porn. Worth a read if psychology interests you. If On A winter's Night... is not necessarily a book I'd recommend. The core concept is interesting - split between a meta-narrative of the experience of being a reader, told in second-person, and a series of the first chapters of novels in different genres - and Calvino is clearly having fun toying with his readers. Yet I found it quite tiresome to read at times, as some of those 'first chapters' were not engaging. Its reputation as a challenging book is well-earned. The Fifth Risk was, I suspect, rushed out of the publishers a little early and a few chapters short, in order to cash in on interest in the failures of the Trump administration. And while it is indeed about the administration and some of the bizarre decisions being made by people within it, it is far more about how we don't really understand exactly what our government departments do. Like most of Lewis' work, it is about people and the often remarkable things that they do, and about how the Trump administration threatens the safety of ordinary people in the US. I enjoyed it! In Progress: Civil War: A history Of England Volume III by Peter Ackroyd - it's fascinating, but I don't think there'll be another one this month, as its incredibly long.
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Dec 9, 2018 00:08
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Somehow I edited my last post for September instead of making a new post. drat. Anyway. Haven’t updated in a couple of months. I have still been reading, but have also been quite busy. Not looking like I’m going to hit my number for the year unless I go for a lot of short stories. 24. The Marquise of O and other Stories by Heinrich von Kleist. This was my wildcard. Honestly, not a big fan. The stories themselves were somewhat interesting, but they just ran on and on. For some reason, when a paragraph spans multiple pages, I find it extremely hard for me to read. And most of these stories were like that. 25. Revenge by Yoko Ogawa. Interesting little “horror” book. A group of stories that sort of follow each other. I enjoyed this. 26. Audition by Ryu Murakami. Read this for my local book club. Was hard to determine who the antagonist was honestly. Felt very dated even though the English translation was recent. 27. A Brief History of Seven Killings by Marlon James. One of those books I keep thinking about. A LONG book. Took me most of October to get through. However, very good. I found myself speaking Jamaican patois sometimes. 28. Home by Hyun Jin-gun. Short story. Old Korean literature, written during the colonial period. 29. The Overstory by Richard Powers. Another book club book. Really enjoyed this. Every time I see a tree getting cut or wood being used I get sad now. 30. The Accusation by Bandi. Korean literature from the other side of the border. Sad, but good. 31. 고구려 나들이 by Jeon Ho-tae. Korean children’s book read while waiting for a haircut. It counts for the bonus! 1. Set a goal for number of books or another personal challenge. 31/40 2. Of the books you read this year, make sure at least 20% of them are written by women. 9/31 — bonus: Of these make sure half are by authors new to you. 7/9 3. Of the books you read this year, make sure at least 20% of them are written by someone non-white. 14/31 — bonus: Of these make sure half are by authors new to you 13/14 — bonus: Make sure 10% of the books you read this year are by LGBT authors 1/31 — bonus: Participate in the SHAMEFUL The Greatest Books You've Never Read thread — bonus: Similarly, get a wildcard from another thread in this forum — bonus: Read literally the first in-person book recommendation you get in 2018 (solicited or not) — bonus: Read a book written/published the exact year you were born — bonus: Read something that wins an award in 2018, but only after it is announced (i.e. don't apply retroactively) — — bonus: Read something political from/about a country you aren't from and don't currently live in 12. Read a poetry collection. — bonus: Read poems by at least 10 different poets — bonus: Read short stories by at least 10 different authors — bonus: Read a play first published in the last 10 years — bonus: Read something about a (nonfictional) war that didn't involve the U.S. 16. Read something biographical. — bonus: Read something biographical about someone you've met/seen in person 17. Read something about religion. — bonus: Read a major religious text — bonus: Read something narrated in the 2nd person — bonus: Read something currently banned, censored, or challenged in its country of origin — bonus: Read something about a genre of music you're explicitly not a fan of — bonus: Read something about hunger 22. Read something about the future. — bonus: Read something about a future that takes place before the current year
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Dec 9, 2018 02:22
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2018 Reading Challenge Essay Contest Okay not really a contest just a fun thing to close out the end of the year and the challenge. Write about a book you read for this challenge that you wouldn't have read otherwise. Or just write something else about this challenge if that's what you want to do, I am not a task master. Please label your post with something bolded like above, "Essay Contest" or "Hey Guy!" or something that will catch my eye. There's not really a minimum length but I'd like a reasonable amount and not a single line. I am not qualified to judge writing quality but I will read the posts because I am interested, and then I will add you to some spreadsheet and figure out a way to randomly select a winner (or winners, depending on the number of entries) in like the second week of January and award them with a gift cert (excluding smiley). I know the holidays are busy, they already delayed me from writing this post for like 2 weeks, so I am going to give the deadline as January 10, 2019. Then the winners will be announced and awarded the following day, and the thread will likely be closed shortly after (which would also end it on the anniversary the last one closed). Thanks again to everyone who participated in the challenge or just even hang out giving cool wildcards to people!
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Dec 28, 2018 16:53
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Also I presume we need a booklord for next year?? I checked the previous thread and it looks like the previous booklord asked at the end of November and I volunteered. So sorry for being way behind the curve here, if it's my duty to pass the torch then it would be great if one of you could volunteer and come up with a challenge and post a thread in the next few days 
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Dec 28, 2018 16:58
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December! 61. The Illiad. Homer. I've reread this many times and always found something new. This time was a question: is the spat between the gods something we mortals should suffer? It's fun to try rhetorical questions about this piece of classical work in the context of his audience. Anyway, everyone should read this at least once. 62. Beauty. Sheri S. Tepper. Wow, this book was a mess of different stories meshed together by some weird kind of reasonable ideas. The author probably decided to dump everything in one book. Anyway, at least it was kind of entertaining to read the trainwreck. 63. Los Cuatro Acuerdos. Miguel Ruiz. Some good advice to live. I wish it was easier to follow them, so more people could do it. 64. The 5 Love Languages. Gary Chapman. I like how this provides examples on how to do the advice provided. More books should be like this. Also short. 65. El Llano en Llamas. Juan Rulfo. Some of the short stories are kind of weird but good overall. 66. Angels in America. Tony Kushner. A pretty good play with a LGTB theme, full of emotions and fleshed out characters. A little over dramatic sometimes, but good overall. 67. Bird Box. Josh Malerman. The premise was really intriguing and reminiscence of other works. Well, it didn't live up the hype for me, in the end, I was more curious about the setting than anything else, even the characters. Oh, and the end was just bad. 68. Todos los Cuentos. Gabriel García Márquez. A collection of Gacía Márquez' short stories. Some of them are weird, some are pretty good. 69. Don Quijote. Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra. A classic. Always a pleasure to read and reread. — bonus: Of these make sure half are by authors new to you — bonus: Of these make sure half are by authors new to you — bonus: Make sure 10% of the books you read this year are by LGBT authors (7/6) 5. Participate in the TBB BotM thread at least once in 2018 (thread stickied each month at the top of the forum). — bonus: Participate in the SHAMEFUL The Greatest Books You've Never Read thread — bonus: Similarly, get a wildcard from another thread in this forum — bonus: Read literally the first in-person book recommendation you get in 2018 (solicited or not) — bonus: Read a book written/published the exact year you were born — bonus: Read something that wins an award in 2018, but only after it is announced (i.e. don't apply retroactively) — bonus: Read something political from/about a country you aren't from and don't currently live in — bonus: Read poems by at least 10 different poets — bonus: Read short stories by at least 10 different authors — bonus: Read a play first published in the last 10 years — bonus: Read something about a (nonfictional) war that didn't involve the U.S. — bonus: Read something biographical about someone you've met/seen in person — bonus: Read a major religious text — bonus: Read something narrated in the 2nd person — bonus: Read something currently banned, censored, or challenged in its country of origin — bonus: Read something about a genre of music you're explicitly not a fan of — bonus: Read something about hunger — bonus: Read something about a future that takes place before the current year Missed one booklord challenge, but everything else is done! 
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Jan 2, 2019 00:31
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quote:
In December I read five books, bringing my year-end total to sixty-two. 58 - Gaia's Toys, by Rebecca Ore. What I thought would be a thrilling cyberpunk novel turned out to be a grim and miserable near-future SF with severe pacing issues and a real Bad World vibe. Not that I disliked the book: Ore packs an awful lot into it, with dense espionage intrigue, ecoterrorism, gene-tampering and lots of creepy-but-kind-of-sweet giant mantises. One central idea - that the brains of the poor are literally rented out by government and corporate interests for their computing power, in exchange for dole - is genuinely chilling. There's a lot in this book that's upsetting, from sexual assault to mind-editing to betrayal after betrayal after betrayal. A real sense of paranoia runs through the narrative, particularly the main protagonist and her struggle for self-determination. Does she get what she wants, in the end? Is humanity doomed to a future of manipulation, violence and artificiality? Can anyone trust the feds? (Answer: probably not, no.) There are moments of catharsis and respite in this story, but they are rare and hard-earned and they don't last. As a snapshot of 90s SF this is a bleak and tiring read; as a cyberpunk emancipation story it has some seeds of hope if you go digging. 59 - The Crying Of Lot 49, by Thomas Pynchon. I'd never read Pynchon before, so starting with one of his shorter works felt like a good idea. And I'm so glad I did: this book is superb. It's dense, endlessly witty, and Pynchon has a delightful command over the English language, with lines that will stick in my head for a good while. The central mystery stars out a little foggy but becomes incredibly engrossing, and by the end I was so satisfied. It's definitely a book from the 60s, with the associated datedness and troublesome language one might expect. But it's good, it's very good, and I'm kicking myself for not getting round to reading him sooner. 60 - Time Crawlers, by Varun Sayal. Full disclosure: I was given a review copy of this work. A collection of short SF stories, many written as dialogue. Each story is heavily expository, and I got the sense that Sayal very much enjoys exploring specific science-fiction concepts in and of themselves - only two stories, 'Nark-Astra' and 'Eclipse', feel like short stories rather than, say, scripts for graphic novels or short films. However, what we do get is entertaining and engaging. 'Death By Crowd' could be a Charlie Brooker script, and the first and last stories in the collection feel like snippets of some epic science-fantasy opera. Sayal's sense of humour comes through as well, with the satirical 'Genie', a shorter comedic story whose ending genuinely made me laugh. There are some really good things scattered through this work, and I'm looking forward to more of Sayal's writing as he further develops his craft. 61 - Jurassic Park, by Michael Crichton. As a big fan of the films, especially the first one, I was interested to see how the original book told a story I was so familiar with, and it surprised me in really good ways. This is a dense, tech-savvy thriller that always kept me wanting more, with some great character moments and surprisingly strong themes of corporate hubris and the place of humanity in the grand timeline of natural history. There are some characterisations that were changed for the films - Hammond's grandchildren are a little more bland in the book, Nedry even more of a craven glutton - but these flaws were forgivable in a story that kept me so engrossed. This was my first time actually reading Crichton, and I can see now why he was such a force to be reckoned with in his genre. The pacing is superb, the peril is visceral, and I was very satisfied by the ending. 62 - The Bees, by Laline Paull. A dystopian novel set in a beehive is enough of an elevator pitch to have me interested already, but I was not expecting Paull to not only deliver on the premise but surpass its potential with powerful skill. Tonally located somewhere between Watership Down and The Handmaid's Tale, the story of Flora 717's personal journey from neophyte sanitation worker to realising her true destiny is really gripping. The world of the hive is fleshed out enough to feel like a living world, and the characters and archetypes within it feel familiar but distinct enough to keep the oppressive picture from getting dull. I found myself moved by the ending and epilogue in ways I could not have predicted when I first picked this up. One of the best books I've read this year, and one I'll be recommending to people. — bonus: Similarly, get a wildcard from another thread in this forum — bonus: Read something that isn't in your primary language — — — bonus: Read a major religious text — bonus: Read something about a genre of music you're explicitly not a fan of Challenges I failed, and why: 6b: Similarly, get a wildcard from another thread in this forum - I started my wildcard suggestion but did not finish by the end of the year! 10b: Read something that isn't in your primary language - I have some Spanish graphic novels I never got round to. 17b: Read a major religious text - I started the Quran! And got about 50 pages in before my eyes glazed over. It's not exactly a mile-a-minute thriller. 20b: Read something about a genre of music you're explicitly not a fan of - It's really hard to think of genres I'm not a fan of. I think I should have looked at an artist I dislike, perhaps. Other thoughts: I really cut it close with my demographics, just scraping by on reading not-white-men. I read 38 books not written by white men, which is only one more than last year! I barely read any nonfiction this year, which I attribute mostly to the misery of the real world in 2018. I read a lot more this year, in terms of pages - both because I read a lot more graphic novels, but also because my current job gives me a lot of commuting time to read. Total page count ~17785. avg 287 pages/book avg 49 pages/day. I read more and more widely than last year, so go me!
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Jan 2, 2019 04:05
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