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hello, I am late to this game but I would like to play! Personal goal: in addition to my usual genre diet of swords and spaceships, I will read at least 20 new-to-me "classics" by the end of this year. Booklord's challenge: yes! Catch-up book diary: 2019 January The Best American Science Fiction & Fantasy 2018 - ed. N. K. Jemisin and John Joseph Adams (anthology of 20 short stories) I don't have a lot of experience with anthologies, but found more hits than misses in this one. Don’t Press Charges and I Won’t Sue by Charlie Jane Anders was loving harrowing and I had to put the book down and breathe heavily for a little bit after. ZeroS by Peter Watts: sharp, visceral, blackly funny, thought-provoking. Only story I couldn't get through was The Hermit of Houston by Samuel Delaney. Cumbersome and unnatural dialogue, cutesy satirical references to current tech and current culture that just came off as out of touch and bad tempered, old man yells at cloud. I found it pretty much unreadable, and was bummed. To Say Nothing of the Dog - Connie Willis Read Doomsday Book in 2018 and literally, physically, could not put it down until I finished, so thought I'd try out some of her other Oxford time travel department stories. This one was a broad farce and had some genuinely very funny moments, but, well. I don't have a lot of background in social comedies, or Victorian history, and I never read Three Men In a Boat by Jerome K Jerome which this book HEAVILY references, so it didn't really sing for me. Still a fun romp though. Gets a bonus point for acknowledging, however briefly, that time travel into the past is a very dangerous sport for the non-white. The Library Book - Susan Orlean Loved this. Beautiful and meditative exploration of the library's past, present, and future, anchored in Orlean's own personal history and relationship with her mother, and the catastrophic Los Angeles central library fire in the 1980s. Perennial Seller - Ryan Holiday Breezy, bloggy book about how to approach the act of creating something (a book, a film, a product, a business) from the standpoint of building and selling things of real value that will capture audience's imaginations, and endure, rather than trying to hit it big quick and inevitably flame out. A Burden Shared - Jo Walton (short story) Thought provoking look at a family living in the near future, where people with chronic pain can offload their suffering to a consenting volunteer. A Wrinkle In Time - Madeline L'Engle (re-read) Meg breaks all the rules of protagonists by being passive, whiny, and literally incapacitated for a large chunk of the book, but I still sniffled and teared up when she finally achieved the power of real love. Also Aunt Beast is my mom now All Systems Red - Martha Wells Artificial Condition - Martha Wells Rogue Protocol - Martha Wells I LOVE MURDERBOT. 2019 February Exit Strategy - Martha Wells I STILL LOVE MURDERBOT. Making Money - Terry Pratchett A re-tread of the much better Going Postal. Still fun though. I Shall Wear Midnight - Terry Pratchett Occasionally clunky dialogue and expositional inelegance and a tacked-on ending and a sub-par villain didn't stop me from loving this book and finding it powerful and dark and yet another compelling example of how Pratchett was both furious at humans for the wretched, evil, vicious things we can't stop doing to one another, and how he also loved humans so much, because we're just... humans, and we're a mess, and what else can you do but choose to love? Nation - Terry Pratchett Same as above, but even more so. Imaginative and strange and bleak and full of compassion. Guards! Guards! - Terry Pratchett (re-read) Men at Arms - Terry Pratchett (re-read) Feet of Clay - Terry Pratchett (re-read) Extremely good and solid Discworld romps. Feet of Clay in particular is a fun, tightly plotted murder mystery, and also finds time to pose some interesting philosophical questions. I love his conception of the golems, and I love the big mistake they made, because of course they did, and I love its terrible, grisly result. Jingo - Terry Pratchett (re-read) Good moments, good comic scenes, but the plot doesn't hang together as well as the first three in the Watch series. The Fifth Elephant - Terry Pratchett (re-read) Vimes OP, please nerf. Also, I wish Pratchett would give Angua something better to do than moan about being a werewolf all the time and then get rescued by a man (or wolf) :| Night Watch - Terry Pratchett (re-read) Starts off a little clunky, with that thing Pratchett likes to do where the characters are all in possession of information that is kept secret from the reader to build artificial suspense. Then the time explosion happens and the story gets quite good. Vimes's coming of age book. Interesting exploration of social unrest, mob mentality, governance, and nonviolent (or very violent) resistance. Thud! - Terry Pratchett Sigh. Some cool moments, but Vimes is OP again, up to 11 this time. Signs of Pratchett's mental decline show themselves in lengthy, bombastic dialogue, and established characters acting very out of character (man-of-the-people Vimes, who loves Ankh-Morpork and hates being a duke, allows the Watch to stop the entire city's traffic during rush hour so he, personally, can make it home faster? What?) Wyrd Sisters - Terry Pratchett (re-read) This book doesn't get a lot of attention but I personally think it's one of the very greats. Granny Weatherwax, Nanny Ogg, and Magrat are in top form here and both the A and the B plot are tight and strong (and the B plot pays off wonderfully). You read Macbeth in high school, right? A delight all around. Witches Abroad - Terry Pratchett (re-read) Soggier than Wyrd Systers, but still fun, with some very good comic bits, and hints about the real power of witchcraft lying in knowing exactly who you are, and what you want, with no illusions or self-deception. CURRENT BOOKLORD CHALLENGE STATUS 1. Total books: 20 Total short stories: 21 New-to-me "Classics": 0 2. Of the books you read this year, make sure at least 20% of them are written by women. 7/20, or 35% 3. Of the books you read this year, make sure at least 20% of them are written by someone non-white. 0/20 :| 4. Read a book by an author from every continent ( 5. Read at least one book by an LGBT author. ...is Martha Wells queer? I feel like she might be? regardless, I am not going to count this as checked off yet. 6. Read at least one book by an indigenous author. 7. Participate in the TBB BotM thread at least once in 2019 (thread stickied each month at the top of the forum). 8. Ask another poster to issue you a wildcard, then read it. 9. Get a recommendation from a friend or loved one. 10. Read a book by a local author. 11. Read a book published in 2019. 12. Read a book with an awesome cover. 13. 14. Read a poetry collection. 15. 16. Read a play. 17. Read a book about feminism. 18. Read a book involving sports. 19. Read something biographical. 20. Read something that has been banned, censored, or challenged. 21. Read something in the public domain. 22. Read one book you didn’t finish in a previous attempt (think high school if nothing comes to mind!). 23. Read a book about art. 24. Read a book that is the basis for a movie/tv show you have already seen.
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Mar 5, 2019 02:52
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citybeatnik posted:I still need to sit down and read both this one and The Shepherd's Crown - I was too bummed by Terry's passing to sit down and give either of them a go. I totally feel that. It's a big part of why it's taken me so long to get to ISWM and Thud (and Unseen Academicals, Snuff, and Shepherd's Crown, none of which I've cracked open yet). I don't want to say goodbye, and I especially don't want to say it on a down note. FWIW, though, I Shall Wear Midnight felt to me like Pratchett's high-note farewell to Discworld. There are some technical problems, as mentioned, but the heart of the book is good and brave and wise and pure and it is right there on every page. quote:I think that the Vimes Elbow (tm) being a match for the werewolves was meant to be a commentary on the crypto-fascists-in-fur feeling that they were so superior to humans only to have a furious alcoholic piledrive them in to a boiling hotspring. Crypto-Fascists In Fur, title of my debut glam-punk album. I agree, but I also don't love it. I'm having a hard time articulating exactly why I'm unsatisfied by Vimes's character arc after Feet of Clay, but I think it's this: every book after that, he starts kicking more and more rear end, but learning less and less from it each time. Night Watch is kind of the pinnacle of this trend because 1. all the rear end-kicking literally takes place outside of history and none of it affects the present, and 2. Vimes really doesn't learn anything new at all -- he gets reminded of the importance of what he's already learned, over his years and years of experience, and then gets to teach it to his younger self. quote:Also, if you thought that Vimes is OP in this one you'll really dislike both Snuff (which was cringeworthy as well but had some nice spots in it) and his appearance in Raising Steam. I put down Raising Steam less than 20 pages in and didn't pick it back up again. It felt like a completely different animal from Pratchett's other works. A sad and limping animal  quote:Anything with Nanny and Granny in it is a great book. There's an animated movie you can find of this floating around that I'd highly recommend. Thank you for the rec! I will investigate.
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Mar 8, 2019 22:37
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Chamberk posted:6. The Overstory - Richard Powers What'd you think of this one? I'm really interested, but haven't picked it up yet. quote:7. Dawn (Xenogenesis #1) - Octavia Butler And what'd you think of these? I found the trilogy powerfully weird and rewarding, but also dry and a little cold at times, which feels strange for a series that's so much about sex and sexual attraction. Here's where I'm at: 2019 March Tough month. I managed to read 1 book, and some short stories as homework for a creative writing class I'm in. 21. How To Read A Book - Mortimer J. Adler. As you might expect of someone named "Mortimer J. Adler," this was written by a white dude in the 1930s, and is mostly a polemic against the sorry state of the American educational system, but also has some cool bits that have made me think harder about which books I read, how I read them, and how I could get more out of the experience of reading. Adler's big thing is to read books that are smarter than you are, and read them multiple times, closely and analytically, approaching them from different angles with each pass. Short stories, in alphabetical order by author: Ingeborg Bachmann - Everything Ann Beattie - Jacklighting Paul Bowles - A Distant Episode Raymond Carver - Fat T. Coraghessan Boyle - Greasy Lake Julio Cortázar - Bestiary Richard Ford - Communist Flannery O'Connor - The Artificial friend of the family (sorry. that's the actual title. feels weird. good story though.) Luisa Valenzuela - I'm Your Horse in the Night All of these were both terrific and totally unlike one another, which I guess is to be expected from an anthology of literary all-stars. Personal faves were Bachmann (narrator goes down a dizzying intellectual/existential/emotional/quantum-physics-level spiral after the birth of his first child), Cortázar (floaty, bubbly, energetic, childlike story about a family mired in horrendous abuse), Ford (emotionally dry as dust, but weird and unnerving, with beautiful imagery, and a feeling of violence just off the horizon), and Valenzuela (rich but spare at the same time, with several sharp turns in a very short story, and amazing rhythmic language, with sentences sometimes like songs and sometimes like bullets) Hoping to get more reading time this month. 1. Personal Challenge. Total books: 21 Total short stories: 30 New-to-me "Classics": 0/20 2. Of the books you read this year, make sure at least 20% of them are written by women. 7/21, or 33% 3. Of the books you read this year, make sure at least 20% of them are written by someone non-white. 0/21
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Apr 8, 2019 05:32
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Haven’t posted in a long rear end time, here’s what I’ve been up to since March: Bluebeard Kurt Vonnegut Convenience Store Woman Sayaka Murata The Dispossessed Ursula K. LeGuin Beloved Toni Morrison The Crying of Lot 49 Thomas Pynchon Writing Down the Bones Natalie Goldberg in late summer/early fall I went off the deep end and binged a bunch of sci-fi / fantasy: Seraphina Rachel Hartman Shadow Scale Rachel Hartman The Fifth Season N.K. Jemisin The Obelisk Gate N.K. Jemisin The Stone Sky N.K. Jemisin Terrier Tamora Pierce Bloodhound Tamora Pierce Mastiff Tamora Pierce The Raven Tower Ann Leckie Back on track since October: Reservation Blues Sherman Alexie Born To Run Christopher McDougall currently working on Mrs. Dalloway by Virginia Woolf but it's slow going. 1. Personal Challenge. Total books: 38 New-to-me "Classics": 5/20 2. Of the books you read this year, make sure at least 20% of them are written by women. 20/38 = 53% 3. Of the books you read this year, make sure at least 20% of them are written by someone non-white. 6/38 = 16% 4. Read a book by an author from every continent ( 5. Read at least one book by an LGBT author. 6. 7. Participate in the TBB BotM thread at least once in 2019 (thread stickied each month at the top of the forum). 8. Ask another poster to issue you a wildcard, then read it. 9. Get a recommendation from a friend or loved one. 10.  11. 12. Read a book with an awesome cover. 13. 14. Read a poetry collection. 15. 16. Read a play. 17. Read a book about feminism. 18. 19. Read something biographical. 20. Read something that has been banned, censored, or challenged. 21. Read something in the public domain. 22. Read one book you didn’t finish in a previous attempt (think high school if nothing comes to mind!). 23. Read a book about art. 24. Read a book that is the basis for a movie/tv show you have already seen.
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Nov 4, 2019 01:55
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