|
I'm in for 50 books and the first 6 parts of Booklord Challenge. I enjoyed doing the challenge last year, but want to keep it a bit simpler this time around. I also want to post more on the thread. I think the theme weeks is a great idea, I'll be sure to peek in for those. Good luck all, happy reading!
|
#
¿
Jan 3, 2018 04:33
|
|
|
|
| # ¿ May 13, 2024 23:22 |
|
|
Hit me with a wildcard, somebody. Preferably, but not necessarily, something by a Female author or author of color (or both!).
|
|
#
¿
Jan 28, 2018 00:08
|
|
|
January check-in! 1. The Shining, by Stephen King. A little overlong, not too scary, and heavy reliance on a troubling and racist trope. Some decent imagery, but not King's best. 2. The Moon and the Other, by John Kessel. Read this for a book club I didn't end up going to and I'm really sad about that. Kessel circles around having something to say about gender roles, but never actually does. The book takes place in a matriarchal utopia on the moon. Lots of subterfuge and politicking that was engrossing, but I really wanted Kessel to take a stand one way or the other. Lacked bite. 3. The Sound and The Fury, by William Faulkner. Kinda went over my head, but I'm glad I read it. I'm sure I'd enjoy it more on a reread now that I know a little bit about it. 4. When They Call You A Terrorist: A Black Lives Matter Memoir, by Patrisse Khan-Cullors and asha bandele. Pretty moving and interesting. I found Khan-Cullors' life before Black Lives Matter to be very interesting. Once the Black Lives Matter stuff starts happening the pace gets ramped up a lot and lacked as much emotional impact. 5. Borne, by Jeff VanderMeer. Really wanted to like this one but it was just OK. One really weak character sunk a lot of the book for me. Still some neat ideas, though few are really explored to their fullest. The title character is the best part. Goals 1. 5/50 Books Read. 2. %Women Authors: 20% 3. %Authors of Color: 20% 4. LGBTQIA+ Author: Not yet. 5. TBB BotM Participation: Not yet. 6. Wildcard: Not yet. As far as political stuff goes, I'm with thatdarnedbob. I read Arundhati Roy's book Capitalism: A Ghost Story in 2016 and really liked it. A good showing of how India has been impacted by capitalism. So much corruption.
|
|
#
¿
Feb 1, 2018 04:53
|
|
|
thatdarnedbob posted:Your wildcard is Tell Me How It Ends: An Essay in 40 Questions by Valeria Luiselli. Letters from the Dust Bowl by Caroline Henderson
|
|
#
¿
Feb 3, 2018 02:19
|
|
|
A human heart posted:A Question of Power, by Bessie Head This is phenomenal so far. Thanks.
|
|
#
¿
Feb 11, 2018 21:37
|
|
|
Here's what I read in February. 6. All Systems Red, by Martha Wells. Fast and fun sci-fi novella with an interesting concept. Ultimately I think there wasn't really enough space to let the characters breathe and let the events and their repercussions really land. Still, good enough for me to anticipate the sequels. 7. The Black Tides of Heaven, by JY Yang (LGBTQIA+ Author). Really cool setting, similar problems as the above. I was aching for more worldbuilding, but there just weren't enough pages. I think I liked this one a little better than the above because of the interesting setting and more fleshed-out characters. Will definitely read the companion novella. 8. Zenith, by Sasha Alsberg and Lindsay Cummings. A lovely first novel by a person who should not be writing novels at all. Nine different point of view characters, all characterized and written about with the same exact tone. Tons of completely unnecessary worldbuilding, cringeworthy dialogue, and a boring, cliché plot that plays out painfully slow. One of the worst things I've ever read. 9. The Sign of Four, by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle (SA BotM). The first novel-length Sherlock I've read. A bit underwhelming. Sherlock isn't that cool or fun here and spends more time explaining what he did or what he's going to do than actually doing. Then there's a weird exposition dump at the end that doesn't really justify itself. 10. A Question of Power, by Bessie Head (Wildcard). A woman in a kind of psychic battle with the metaphorical God and metaphorical Satan. I was amazed at the representation of Elizabeth's breaks with reality. Marred slightly by some out-of-left-field homophobia. Goals 1. 10/50 Books Read. 2. %Women Authors: 40% 3. %Authors of Color: 30% 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.
|
|
#
¿
Mar 3, 2018 13:16
|
|
|
Probably everyone knows this already, but please read Ursula Le Guin. I'm reading/working through her book about writing, Steering the Craft and it's an absolute joy. Her wit comes through excellently. Plus the book is full of fun and useful writing exercises. I'm taking it kind of slow to make sure I get the most out of it; it's not a very long text. I'm also reading Ada Palmer's Seven Surrenders, the sequel to Too Like the Lightning. I really fell in love with Palmer's world and her writing style and returning to it has been quite a treat. Probably not for everyone, but the intricate politics of the "utopian" setting and its Hives and technological advancements... It's just really fun to exist in for a while.
|
|
#
¿
Mar 8, 2018 01:07
|
|
|
Only got through four books in March. 11. Seven Surrenders, by Ada Palmer. Sequel to Too Like the Lightning, which I read last year and loved. Intricate political scheming in a fairly unique future setting. I imagine I would enjoy it even more if I were better read in Greek plays and philosophy. 12. The Dispossessed by Ursula Le Guin. I can't imagine a utopia book coming close to this. Le Guin raises a lot of interesting questions about the status quo of capitalism and shows some not entirely unrealistic alternatives. 13. Deadhouse Gates by Steven Erikson. A reread. I found the book to be so rich with detail and foreshadowing that a reread was extremely rewarding. I'll likely continue rereading the rest of the series. 14. Where Freedom Starts: Sex Power Violence #MeToo, by Various. Released as a free ebook by Verso. A collection of poignant essays in the wake of the #MeToo movement. A hugely diverse array of viewpoints on the issues of sexual harassment and assault from how they're defined to how they should be punished. Really appreciated all the views and connections this collection raised. Goals 1. 14/50 Books Read. 2. %Women Authors: 50% 3. %Authors of Color: 29% 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.
|
|
#
¿
Apr 1, 2018 23:19
|
|
|
April trip report! Another 4 books added to the pile. 15. Children of Time, by Adrian Tchaikovsky. Decent read. I wonder if I would have liked it more if it hadn't been hyped up to me in the SF/F thread. The bits on spider planet were great; the bits on the ark ship were less good. Then they had to collide for the big finale, which underwhelmed me. Quality of premise and imaginative spider planet stuff carried most of the weight. 16. Things That Make White People Uncomfortable, by Michael Bennett. I was going to see this beautiful man talk about this book, but his talk was cancelled after Bennett was arrested on trumped up charges! Though the book was cool, a lot of the things Bennett discusses are fairly well known to me by now. I'm glad this book is out there, because if there's a chance some people out there want to know more about the ideologies behind Bennett's politics that's a good thing. The sections discussing the NFL and NCAA were of particular interest to me because I didn't know much about how those respective sports leagues treat their athletes. That stuff is pretty hosed up. 17. The Red Threads of Fortune, by JY Yang. Though narrower in focus than Black Tides, Red Threads gets in a lot of good characterization for Mokoya, sister to the protagonist of Black Tides. It tells a fairly straightforward story of hunting a dragon type thing. Big cool action stuff in Yang's terrific setting counterbalanced by chilling depictions of PTSD. Again, I wish these novellas were part of a larger work that could really stretch itself out. The setting is great so I'm eagerly anticipating the next novella. 18. The Romulan Way, by Diane Duane. Well I'm back on my Star Trek bullshit. This book set out to do something a little different: explore the backgrounds of notable Star Trek baddies the Romulans. The book goes a long way to rationalizing the Romulans' behavior and largely succeeds. Half of the book is a kind of Romulan history text, the other half is a boring story with Leonard McCoy aka Doctor Bones. Bones somehow gets roped up into trying to exfiltrate a Starfleet spy posing as a Romulan. He's sent in with the fear that the agent has "gone native." This side of the book spins its wheels a lot and didn't do a good job of making me care about the spy, Arrhae. The climax of the book is McCoy filibustering a Romulan court by talking about how to make chili, mint juleps, everything else. The history (though declared noncanon) was worth the price of admission. Goals 1. 18/50 Books Read. 2. %Women Authors: 44.4% 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.
|
|
#
¿
May 6, 2018 00:14
|
|
|
Not sure if I'm too late for biography week but I'm about 100 pages into Trevor Noah's Born a Crime and am enjoying it a lot. I'd heard good things about it forever and finally found a cheap used copy. It's very conversational and funny, despite the heavy topics of racism and oppression. Would definitely recommend.
|
|
#
¿
May 14, 2018 18:39
|
|
|
Here's my May. Five books: 19. Six Wakes, by Mur Lafferty. Didn't quite live up to the premise which is: clone crew of generation ship wakes up to discover their prior iterations murdered brutally and has to figure out what went wrong. Some decent whodunnit parts made interesting by the whole clone thing. Ending left a lot to be desired. 20. I'll Be Gone in the Dark, by Michelle McNamara. This book taught me that true crime is not my bag. McNamara's writing gives background to the Golden State Killer. Does not veer into victim idolatry or glamorizing the crimes. However, it was too unsettling for me to read knowing this happened to real people. I'm glad it exists; it's important to not shy away from real horrors, and instead learn from them. But it was quite a bit much for me. 21. Born a Crime, by Trevor Noah. Though frequently funny, this book is really about a country struggling to find an identity after years of racial apartheid. That its mirrored so well in Noah's own growth and the development of his own identity is quite a nice bit of writing. It was very genuine and Noah's conversational tone made it an enjoyable read. 22. The Castle Doctrine, by Craig Schaefer. Schaefer has really grown as a writer since this series began. The book is tight and well-paced, with rock-solid plotting. Schaefer sets things up, gets all the pieces on the board, and then it all shakes out. Usually in favor of the protagonist, but hey. I never noticed how violent these books are before. Maybe having just read the Golden State Killer book made me a bit squeamish. There was a lot of killing... 23. The Will to Battle, by Ada Palmer. Book Three of the Terra Ignota series. This one really hammered home how much I love Palmer's richly crafted setting and wide array of interesting characters. It's one of those things where I'm waiting for certain characters to interact because I know it's gonna be awesome. And I can't wait to see it all come crashing down in the next and final book. Goals 1. 23/50 Books Read. 2. %Women Authors: 47.8% 3. %Authors of Color: 30.4% 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. I'm currently reading The City & The City, by China Miéville. Nice little murder mystery so far. With a bit of a spin on it...
|
|
#
¿
Jun 4, 2018 22:22
|
|
|
Only got through two books in June, so here's my June AND July. 24. The City & The City, by China Miéville. A drawn out but mostly interesting tale of two cities, both occupying the same space. There are crossovers and places that are "in" both cities and there are places that are in one or the other. Makes for an interesting setting for a murder mystery. But the mystery dragged on a bit and the conclusion was just kind of a conclusion. Worth reading for Miéville's wonderful prose and the concept. 25. The Freeze-Frame Revolution, by Peter Watts. Shorter than I would have liked, but, luckily, it's a novella in a universe Watts has written a lot of other stories in! It's depressing and funny and scary in all the ways I love. I did really miss out by not knowing anything about the setting though. There's no recap for newbies. Once I make a lap through the other stories I'm sure I'll return to this and love it all the more. 26. Revenant Gun, by Yoon Ha Lee. Doesn't quite reach the highs of either of the previous two books. It drags its heels a little bit and focuses on characters that are less compelling than the ones I liked in books one and two. But the setting is still amazing and I'm sad to see Lee leaving it behind. Eager for whatever he does next. 27. Shell-Shocked: On the Ground Under Israel's Gaza Assault, by Mohammed Omer. Despite the books short page count and the fact that each "chapter" is usually one to two pages long, this thing took me a while to get through. It is brutal. The book is made up of Omer's reports from Gaza during the Israeli bombardment in 2014. Omer focuses on the stories of people whose stories usually don't get out. Regular people closing their shops because of blockades. Parent waiting for the bombs to stop so they can get their child's corpse from the street. It's all so horrifying it is hard to think it's real. But as the body count rises with each new account I felt like I couldn't look away. 28. A Rising Man, by Abir Mukherjee. Another detective novel, this one taking place in colonial Calcutta in 1919. The main character is Sam Wyndham, a sort of detective wunderkind whose wife died while he was fighting in WWI. He developed an opium habit. This was a really confusing novel. I sort of expected to get a subversion of the horror of colonial occupation, but Mukherjee was never very critical, at least not in any direct way. The main character was a drag, hugely outshined by his partner, Surendranath. Surendranath has the charisma and detective skills to be a main character, but somehow we're stuck in Wyndham's guilty and condescending racism and sexism. 29. Too Many People?, by Ian Angus and Simon Butler. That question mark is important, there. Angus and Butler take on the myths of overpopulation and its effects on the climate. They do a really convincing job while also being very entertaining. I never really knew about the populationist theory of climate change, that more people = more pollution. On its face it makes sense. Angus and Butler prove how ridiculous the notion is. They also point out that blaming it all on increasing population and immigration distracts from really horrible things the richest people and corporations in the world are doing. I also appreciated hearing more viewpoints than just the US's. Angus is Canadian and Butler is Australian. I feel like a lot of what I've read on climate change comes out of the US, so this was refreshing as well as elucidating. 30. Artificial Condition, by Martha Wells. I love Murderbot, but I'm not in love with these novellas so far. This one is a little subdued compared to the first with more character growth for Murderbot. Some other characters are involved but I have no idea if they're going to be long term or not because I did not end up caring about them one bit. I realized this could have been a stylistic thing since Murderbot hates its humans and wishes they weren't so stupid so it could just sit around and watch soap operas. But a book can't really hold me if there's only one compelling character and that character spends a majority of the page count trying not to do what makes it so compelling. Goals 1. 30/50 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.
|
|
#
¿
Aug 3, 2018 02:21
|
|
|
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.
|
|
#
¿
Nov 5, 2018 02:53
|
|
|
|
| # ¿ May 13, 2024 23:22 |
|
|
43. The Monster Baru Cormorant, by Seth Dickinson. Though not quite reaching the emotional peak of the prequel's ending, Monster does some great things to grow the setting, grow the characters, and introduce new ones. It feels more like a Part One than the first book did, but that's okay. I'm hooked. 44. The Body Keeps the Score, by Bessel van der Kolk. Maybe The Trauma Book? Not sure, but it covered a lot of ground. Good, descriptive anecdotes from van der Kolk's own patients and experiences help show the various ways trauma can be caused and how it can present. Perhaps the most interesting bit was the last section covering the various methods psychologists have come up with that have helped trauma survivors better than pharmaceuticals. Some really interesting things there, with the research to back it all up. Definitely recommended. 45. To All the Boys I've Loved Before, by Jenny Han. A feel-good high school romance with a little bit more social awareness. Think John Hughes updated for today's sensibilities. The plot is light and breezy and moves right along. It's frequently funny and just as frequently gave me butterflies like what I might have felt in high school interacting with a crush of my own. 46. P.S. I Still Love You, by Jenny Han. Sequel to the above. I liked this one a bit more because I had seen the movie, which covered all of book one and a little of this one. So there was a bit more to this one that kept me turning the pages wondering how things would resolve. Another past love of Lara Jean's returns and brings a lot of good tension and raised stakes to make this a worthwhile read. The third book is on my to-read list. 47. How to be Alone, by Lane Moore. Some absolutely hilarious anecdotes, some horrifying anecdotes, some anecdotes that had me weeping. Lane Moore is funny as hell and her life has been something else. Always honest with her emotions, Moore is instantly endearing. I was cursing out her exes right along with her. And praising the little doggy, Lights, for being a bright spot in Lane's life. Yay, animal companionship! 48. Red Rosa, by Kate Evans. A very good intro to the life of Rosa Luxemburg. Luxemburg is a leftist thinker I've always meant to read more of. I found this at a thrift store and figured it would be a start. Needless to say, Luxemburg was an amazing woman. I can't really say I enjoyed this as a graphic novel, though. The art is not my preferred style. But for a brief look into Luxemburg's life, I was pleased. Provided some much needed context for whenever I dig into some of Luxemburg's essays. 49. Call Them by Their True Names, by Rebecca Solnit. A collection of essays with a simple premise: By calling things what they are (fascism, sexism, racism, violence, etc.) we can start to take things down instead of wrestling with the facades and feints. Solnit always cuts to the heart of things, and this book was no exception. Her wit and tone make each essay easy and enjoyable to read, even if the subject matter is disheartening or unjust. 50. The Citadel of the Autarch, by Gene Wolfe. With The Book of the New Sun now behind me, I have to say I feel a bit let down. I enjoyed the books for what they were, but kept expecting the a-ha moment I had heard so much about. While there are some interesting revelations I do not feel an instant urge to reread to explore the new context. I imagine there's tons of things I missed. Maybe I'll go back at some point. I will definitely read Urth of the New Sun, though, since the end of this wasn't quite the end of Severian's story... Goals 1. 50/50 Books Read.  2. %Women Authors: 40% - 20/50 3. %Authors of Color: 30% - 15/50 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. A very enjoyable year of reading! There were only a handful of books that I outright hated. And a good many I expect to be thinking about well into the future. Hope everyone had a good time!
|
|
#
¿
Jan 8, 2019 02:20
|
|