|
I'm joining in with this. I am always looking to broaden my reading horizons, so I'm setting the following challenge: 26 Books as a minimum, under 20% rereads (currently 4 books with 1 reread) Booklord's Challenge 2. Of the books you read this year, make sure at least 20% of them are written by women. (minimum 6) 3. Of the books you read this year, make sure at least 20% of them are written by someone non-white. (minimum 6) 4. Read at least one book by an LGBT author. 6. Ask another poster to issue you a wildcard, then read it. 11. Read something political. — bonus: Read something political from/about a country you aren't from and don't currently live in 15. Read something involving history. — bonus: Read something about a war that didn't involve the U.S. 18. Read something from a non-traditional perspective. — bonus: Read something narrated in the 2nd person 20. Read something about music. 22. Read something about the future. — bonus: Read something about a future that takes place before the current year For me, the challenges are really what I'm interested in, and where the bonus is listed, that is the aim. Somebody issue me a wildcard! Completed Books: 1. The Damned United by David Peace (reread) 2. Player One by Douglas Coupland 3. The Undoing Project by Michael Lewis 4. The Sirens of Titan by Kurt Vonnegut In Progress: 5. The Underground Railroad by Colson Whitehead Coming Soon: On Beauty by Zadie Smith When The Shooting Stops by Ralph Rosenblum and Robert Karen Side Jobs by Jim Butcher Thinking Fast and Slow by Daniel Kahneman
|
#
¿
Jan 28, 2018 00:16
|
|
|
|
| # ¿ May 14, 2024 18:21 |
|
|
January Update!Milt Thompson posted:I'm joining in with this. I am always looking to broaden my reading horizons, so I'm setting the following challenge: I know I joined late, but here are some thoughts so far: The Damned United is a great little book, a fictionalised history of part of the life and career of football manager Brian Clough. Clough was always a controversial figure and Peace gives us a glimpse into an arrogant and hubristic version of the man. The film is good too. Player One was enjoyable, dealing with crises in the lives of four people set against the backdrop of a world gone mad. Coupland depicts his characters with great humanity, and although the story gets dark in places, the prose is written with a pleasingly light touch and humour. The Undoing Project is, in my opinion, not one of Lewis' best books. It deals with the lives and partnership of psychologists Amos Tversky and Daniel Kahneman and while the descriptions of their work and its applications in the real world are fascinating, the more biographical portions were quite slow. Still good overall, though. The Sirens of Titan was excellent. There is something about Vonnegut's writing that elevates it into a different class. I found it accessible, funny and moving. The Underground Railroad left me feeling quite angry at the world. The novel itself is excellent. Yet it's clear that Whitehead isn't just writing about the injustices faced by African-American slaves - the humiliations inflicted on them seem to have never ended. If Whitehead's point is that despite emancipation, African-Americans are still not considered entirely human by both covert and overt detractors, or indeed entirely free - then I find myself agreeing with him. Guy A. Person posted:I think this got lost in the shuffle so: read White is for Witching by Helen Oyeyemi It's been added to my shopping list. Thanks!
|
|
#
¿
Feb 6, 2018 13:06
|
|
|
FebruaryMilt Thompson posted:26 Books as a minimum, under 20% rereads (currently 7 books with 1 reread) It was hard to find time to read much this month, but I did finish Thinking Fast and Slow. It's an interesting read, but very information dense, at times dauntingly slow. If you are curious about the fact that your mind can be said to operate at two different speeds with dramatically different results - a fast, instinctive aspect and a slow, introspective one - then it's worth picking up or borrowing from the library. Side Jobs is a collection of short stories from The Dresden Files universe. I enjoyed it on the whole, but especially the stories where Dresden himself is not the narrator. One for fans of the series. I'm adding the following books to the Coming Soon list: The Line Of Beauty by Alan Hollingsworth White Is For Witching by Helen Oyeyemi The Disaster Artist by Greg Sestero and Tom Bissell Tales From Development Hell by David Hughes I'll be attempting On Beauty during the theme week. The last time I picked it up, I couldn't get into it, but I'm willing to give it a few more chapters.
|
|
#
¿
Mar 3, 2018 15:43
|
|
|
Milt Thompson posted:26 Books as a minimum, under 20% rereads (currently 7 books with 1 reread) Only three books but I'm happy with the progress and choices made. When The Shooting Stops is a book I'm very glad I picked up. Ralph Rosenblum was a well-respected movie editor in the sixties and seventies - collaborating with directors such as Sidney Lumet and Woody Allen - and this book is partly a memoir of his life and entry into the editing profession, partly a history of editing and its importance, but most revealingly it is an account of how much editing can change a film. Rosenblum and Karen take us through the exhausting process of editing on a number of films - The Pawnbroker, A Thousand Clowns, The Night They Raided Minsky's - before finishing with an astonishing inside view of how Rosenblum and Allen turned Annie Hall from a screwball comedy into the film released. Fascinating stuff. On Beauty is a book marked by Smith's keen eye for character and the tribulations of family life, but I felt it could have been so much more. I enjoyed it as Smith's prose is often beautiful, but the story drifted almost aimlessly for me and I would have been very interested to see more conflict between the patriarchs of the two families. Nonetheless, it made for an interesting exploration of aspects of black identity and academic life. Tales From Development Hell was a quick and enjoyable read, looking into the factors behind the often agonizing process of writing, rewriting, politicking and assorted nonsense that goes into the production of modern blockbusters, for example the Tim Burton Planet Of The Apes, and Angelina Jolie's Tomb Raider movies. Throughout the book, I was struck with a sense of incredulity at the decisions made by producers, writers and directors which led their films into creative cul-de-sacs and production cancellations. The author finishes with an account of his own ongoing failures as a screenwriter, which was refreshing and illuminating. Progress on the non-white and female author challenges should pick up soon, as my research has led me to some hopefully good books such as Human Acts by Han Kang, Stiff by Mary Roach, An Unkindness of Ghosts by Rivers Solomon, An Unnecessary Woman by Rabih Alameddine, and some others. I'm still searching for a work on a war not involving the US, but I'd like to find something on the Iran-Iraq war. I'm also not sure where to turn for a book about music.
|
|
#
¿
Apr 1, 2018 18:16
|
|
|
Milt Thompson posted:26 Books as a minimum, under 20% rereads (currently 12 books with 1 reread) Sadly only finished the two last month, but I've nearly finished White Is For Witching. The Line Of Beauty was excellent. If you were interested in the life of the British elites in the early 1980s, and in the first days of AIDS crisis in Britain, this would definitely be for you. It follows self-confessed aesthete Nick Guest as he makes his way through post-university life. I appreciated the window it gave me into the gay scene in 1980s London, and the parts which referred to the politics of 80s Britain had the ring of authenticity. I'm going to compare it to On Beauty, which I felt was beautifully written, if a little hollow. The Line Of Beauty is beautifully written too, but I enjoyed it a lot more, as I felt it had real substance to it. On Beauty sometimes seemed to hold its own characters in disdain, but The Line Of Beauty did not. Even when the characters were flawed - which was often - they still felt fully rounded and not caricatured. Suffice to say I'll be reading more by Hollingshurst later this year. The Disaster Artist is something I'd recommend to anyone interested in film-making and especially The Room. Although it makes clear how insane the production of The Room was, it goes to great lengths to humanise Tommy Wiseau, which it was under no pressure to do. Things will speed up soon. Once it gets into June, my workload as am ESL teacher changes considerably and I'll have much more time to read in the summer. I'm planning to pick up a biography, too, probably that of legendary football manager Sir Alex Ferguson.
|
|
#
¿
May 11, 2018 17:21
|
|
|
MockingQuantum posted:Can I request a new wildcard? If you'd like a wildcard from a very recently dead white guy, you could try The Right Stuff by Tom Wolfe. Alternatively, tomorrow will be the 38th anniversary of the Gwangju Uprising, which can be read about in the incredibly good yet horrifying Human Acts by Han Kang Franchescanado posted:Wildcard! How about The Immortal Life Of Henrietta Lacks by Rebecca Skloot? A combination of biography and biology on how one woman's cells helped transform medicine. Robert Deadford fucked around with this message at 09:49 on May 18, 2018 |
|
#
¿
May 17, 2018 21:43
|
|
|
Milt Thompson posted:26 Books as a minimum, under 20% rereads (currently 16 books with 1 reread) May was a good month for reading. I enjoyed all four of the books I finished. White Is For Witching was enjoyable. Oyeyemi is a very capable writer, although I felt that the spooky aspects of this novel added very little to the story. What I appreciated was the more biographical aspects of it - like her characters, Oyeyemi attended Cambridge university and this experience gave her work authenticity. In fact, one of the characters felt entirely like a self-insert. I didn't find this a problem. As an exploration of life as an outsider at Cambridge university, and of the challenges associated with mental illness, I found this book to be at its most compelling. The other major part of the story - the house as an active participant in the events of the story - I was less impressed with. Nonetheless, a good read. Human Acts might just be the best and hardest book I'll read this year. It's a fictional account of the Gwangju Uprising, in which the South Korean Army brutally put down pro-democracy protests in May 1980. Kang (and her translator) do an incredible job of bringing the horrific events of the Uprising to life, moving from the viewpoints of students taking care of the dead, to how surviviors battle the psychological trauma they suffered in the years afterward. It's a hard book to read due to the content, which depicts acts of almost unbelievable immorality carried out by a government against its own people. Highly recommended. So as a palate cleanser, I chose Stiff, which is about as far removed in tone from Human Acts as possible. What happens to the human body after we die? Roach goes to great lengths to investigate, looking at the fate of bodies donated as research. Although you might consider it a morbid book, nothing could be further from the truth. Roach is very careful to report respectfully what she learns, and balances her skilful reportage with a keen sense of humour. The target of her humour is almost exclusively herself and her own attitudes. I really enjoyed it, and I'll be looking forward to reading more of her work later this year. I came across An Unnecessary Woman by chance, when looking for works by a gay author. I thought it sounded like an interesting novel, and happily I was proven right. It's a novel about a great many things: the life of Aaliyah, an old woman in Beirut and how she finds solace in literature. It's about the challenges of translating literature. It's about the difficulties of leading a solitary, lonely life and of being under pressure from your own family. It's about Beirut itself, and about the roles women play in life and the relationships between them. Alahmeddine does a great job in making this novel approachable and readable, and in keeping Aaliyah sympathetic. I'm currently working on Stand On Zanzibar and it's hard-going because it's written in a frankly bizarre style and is 500 pages long. It is seen as something of a classic, though I'm not feeling that just yet. It's not exactly bad, but the structure is annoying as the narrative viewpoint changes dramatically every chapter.
|
|
#
¿
Jun 8, 2018 20:19
|
|
|
Milt Thompson posted:26 Books as a minimum, under 20% rereads (currently 19 books with 2 rereads) A late report because, again, I've been a little too busy to read much. But three books is three books. Stand On Zanzibar was a slow starter for me. From the New Wave of sci-fi, first published in 1968, it won a Hugo award. I can see why: stylistically, it's pretty challenging as the story is told in an odd, fragmented manner, through four strands. The main storyline takes place in chapters named Continuity with chapters related to that by characters or events in sections called Tracking With Close-Ups. Broader world-building happens in chapters entitled The Happening World, which read like you were flicking through TV channels. Finally, sections named Context give the reader an insight into the culture of Brunner's alternate future by quoting from its books. Early on, this structure made the book challenging to read, because it's like being dropped half-awake into the actual world of the story. Yet in the end, this became a great strength of the book, because there is a much greater sense of a world having been built. The actual story itself is a good read. Brunner's vision of 2010 is at the same time quite prescient but, as it turns out, surprisingly wide of the mark (some details can be found here. The story's main theme concerns population control and eugenics, looking at two unrelated situations linked by protagonists who start the story as housemates. Brunner writes well even within the framework he sets himself, but I hesitate to recommend it due to these stylistic choices. Lincoln In The Bardo deserves all the praise it gets in my opinion. I wasn't expecting the story I got. I won't say anymore as I think it's best approached blind. Station Eleven I chose to reread as it was very cheap on Amazon but also a book I enjoyed the first time around. Set in an unspecified future, it's a post-apocalyptic novel about a travelling theatre and orchestra who go from settlement to settlement following a global pandemic. Mandel wrote it beautifully - it's the kind of book The Postman could have been if David Brin had been more concerned with who the characters were in the world rather than what they did. It's this quality - how the characters feel and respond to the world around them - that elevates Station Eleven from ordinary post-apocalyptic sci-fi to something more heartfelt and intelligent. It's good.
|
|
#
¿
Jul 13, 2018 21:41
|
|
|
July and August UpdateMilt Thompson posted:26 Books as a minimum, under 20% rereads (currently 23 books with 2 rereads) July is always very busy for me - EFL summer school - so I wasn't able to read much. August was better. The Mixer isn't a book I'd recommend unless you are a fan of England's Premier League. It is a tactical history of the Premier League, starting with how goalkeepers reacted to a change in the back-pass law, and goes on from there to look at how tactis evolved over the last twenty or so years in response to rule changes, labour law changes and the influence of foreign managers on football in England. If you're a football fan, I'd rank it just below the essential Inverting the Pyramid in terms of quality and readability. The Trees was simultaneously an annoying and enjoyable read. Although it is presented as a British ecological answer to The Road, it is more properly a kind of fantasy novel, featuring strong magical elements. What made it enjoyable was partly its premise - society is destroyed by a global eruption of mature trees, wrecking cities and obsoleting technology - combined with a protagonist who is one of the weakest to head a story that I've read. What made it annoying was the author's ham-fisted dialogue and tendency to overwrite descriptions. Shaw also saw fit to include a major character who is (somehow simultaneously) a teenage Japanese girl, raised by a Californian survivalist, who just happened to be in Britain during the tree apocalypse. Her appearance in the novel was quite jarring and weakened every part of the story she featured in. I wish I had chosen a different book for the music challenge. This Is Your Brain On Music is much less about music and much more about cognitive psychology, which is fair enough, but I was looking for something which combined more music theory alongside the science. Often I felt that Levitin went too in depth into the minutiae of cognitive psychology and not enough into keeping the strands between science and music connected, making the book a battle to get through. Nonetheless, there were many interesting revelations, but I'd hesitate to recommend it. Slouching Towards Babylon, on the other hand, I devoured over the space of three or four days. It's a collection of Didion's essays from the mid 1960s, looking at the counter-culture movement, along with reflections from Didion's own life. It's at its best when Didion isn't writing about herself, as she wears her neuroses very openly. For example, there is a real sense that she never felt like she fitted in anywhere, and this feeling of isolation is pervasive. But overall, the quality in her writing shines through.
|
|
#
¿
Sep 4, 2018 14:24
|
|
|
SeptemberMilt Thompson posted:26 Books as a minimum, under 20% rereads (currently 28 books with 2 rereads) COMPLETED 24. My Brilliant Friend by Elena Ferrante 25. Ex-Heroes by Peter Clines 26. Ex-Patriots by Peter Clines 27. Nudge by Richard Thaler and Cass Sunstein 28. No Hunger In Paradise by Michael Calvin In progress: Pachinko by Min-Jin Lee A good month. My Brilliant Friend was definitely worth reading. I had heard that Elena Ferrante had become a literary phenomenon a few years back while I was living in Italy. This is the first of her Neapolitan Novels, a Bildungsroman about a young girl from Naples. It covers her emotional, physical and political coming-of-age in detail, and in a very engaging manner. The quality of the translation appears to be extremely high and I enjoyed it greatly. Peter Clines' Ex-Heroes and Ex-Patriots are a pair of very silly but rather fun novels about a world in which not only are there super-heroes, but also a global zombie crisis. These are not novels of any depth at all, with barely a nod to character development, but the world of the story is fun and Clines writes well enough to keep me engaged for at least these two novels. Pulpy, but nowhere near the quality of Soon I Will Be Invincible. Nudge concludes my lay study of behavioural economics for the time being. Where The Undoing Project looked at how this field of science got its start, and Thinking Fast And Slow presents many of its key concepts, Nudge looks at how to apply some of the theories of behavioural economics, through a series of case studies. Not as interesting as I hoped it would be, but never mind. No Hunger In Paradise examines the murky world of youth recruitment in professional soccer in Britain. Calvin is one of the leading writers about soccer, and this was an excellent and thorough investigation of the subject matter. There is a balanced mix of positive and negative stories, of young men who got swept away by the hype and of those who have kept their heads. Of particular interest to fans of English football is a long section devoted to the current England manager and his team of assistants. Most of my self-chosen challenges are complete. I just need to fill in the gaps around the edges, and so I hope to read the following books by the end of the year: The Fifth Risk by Michael Lewis - to satisfy the politics challenge If on a winter's night a traveler by Italo Calvino - non-traditional perspective Civil War: The History of England Vol. 3 by Peter Ackroyd
|
|
#
¿
Oct 7, 2018 11:36
|
|
|
|
| # ¿ May 14, 2024 18:21 |
|
|
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.
|
|
#
¿
Dec 9, 2018 00:08
|
|