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So it seems like after you get through the acceptance phase of a pandemic you read a lot more. I've been back to work this past month making videos for online classes, and keeping a more regular schedule helped me read a lot. I read a total of 6. The Sympathizer by Viet Thanh Nguyen. A story about a spy during the Vietnam war. Made me want to go back to Vietnam and look around museums and stuff. There was also some really brutal stuff in there, and lots of racism. 7. Blankets by Craig Thompson. A graphic novel. It felt sort of disjointed and confusing. I liked Habibi more. 8. Mythologies by Roland Barthes. This was given to me as part of the Book Barn Secret Santa years ago. I finally got around to it! It was a difficult book, way over my head, but there were some parts that were really good. I especially liked "Novels and Children" and "Toys." 9. The Miracles of the Namiya General Store by Keigo Higashino. I wanted to read something light-hearted due to the current situation. This was okay, but left me feeling wanting. Something was missing, and I'm not sure what. 1. Set a goal for number of books or another personal challenge. 9/36 Personal challenge: 20% Korean authors. 0/9 Personal challenge: 20% nonfiction. 2/9 2. Of the books you read this year, make sure at least 20% of them are not written by men.1/9 3. Of the books you read this year, make sure a least 20% of them are written by writers of colour.3/9 4. Of the books you read this year, make sure at least 5% of them are written by LGBT writers.1/9 5. Read a book from each decade of the 20th Century (1900s, 1910s etc). 1900s 1920s 1930s 1970s 1980s 1990s 6. Participate at least once in the TBB Book of the Month thread - read the book and post in the thread about that book! 7. Ask someone in this thread for a wildcard, then read it. 8. Read something by an indigenous author. 10. Read something historical. 12. Read something about food that isn't a cookbook. 13. Find the book you have kept on your shelf unread for longest. Read it. 16. Read a play. 17. Read a short story collection. 18. Read something that's only available online. 19. Read a prize-winning book. 20a&b. Read two books with the same (or very similar) titles. 21. Read a love story. 22. Read something banned/censored/challenged. 23. Read a book from a country you've never visited.
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Apr 2, 2020 04:01
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cryptoclastic posted:8. Mythologies by Roland Barthes. This was given to me as part of the Book Barn Secret Santa years ago. I finally got around to it! It was a difficult book, way over my head, but there were some parts that were really good. I especially liked "Novels and Children" and "Toys." This was me! I'm glad you liked it. It's a little eye-opener. Kangxi posted:40 - Doomsday Book, by Connie Willis. Time travel sci-fi. The bits about life in Oxbridge (I've already forgotten which one) are a bit overlong, but the bits about life in medieval English in the mid-1400s are well done. Harrowing, even if I have no idea how accurate this portrayal of that society would be. Here's Adam Roberts' review - he's an sf writer and professor of literature and classics - yeah, there's a few howlers. Blackout/All Clear was apparently hilariously bad in that respect. Safety Biscuits fucked around with this message at 06:36 on Apr 2, 2020 |
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Apr 2, 2020 06:30
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I read Doomsday Book last year and the thing that struck me was the weird obsession everybody has with telephone calls in the 21st century. It felt like Willis wrote it after a prototype telephone had actually just been invented and she was agog with the possibilities for the future and wanted to write a sci-fi story about it, with the time travel being a sideshow.
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Apr 2, 2020 09:35
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Well, March was the worst reading month I've had for one of the challenges, basically ever. Working from home while 2 young kids are running around has just shot any of my reading time to hell. It didn't help that I was reading White Teeth pre-pandemic and despite being good, it's really dense and took probably twice as long as expected. I had grabbed the Collected Works of Nathanael West, intending to read Miss Lonelyhearts from it as my 30s novel. Since the library is closed, I might as well read the whole thing, and I think I'm going to count the books in there individually to buoy my count some. 16. White Teeth by Zadie Smith - This really drills down on 2 families in London from WW2 through the 80s and early 90s. The focus is on immigrants assimilating and the generational conflicts between immigrant parents and kids raised in England. Also, it delves into the nature of fundamentalism, religious, secular, and vegetarian. There's a lot going on here, and it took me longer to read than expected. That being said it was really good and surprisingly funny thoughout. 17. Eifelheim by Michael Flynn - A modern historian tries to figure out why the city of Eifelheim dissapears in the 1300s. Also, told from the 1300s in Eifelheim, aliens have landed and the plague rapidly approaches. This was pretty good. There's a lot to like, but it doesn't hang together as well as you might hope and I didn't find it that engaging. Still, not a bad plague read. 18. The Dream Life of Balso Snell by Nathanael West - You know when the book opens with the narrator encountering the Trojan Horse, with only 3 means of ingress and "“the mouth was beyond his reach, the navel provided a cul-de-sac, and so, forgetting his dignity, he approached the last. O Anus Mirabilis!” you're in for something of a ride. Juvenile, scatological, and often irritating, the narrator encounters a bizarre cast of people, all in time revealed to be artists in search of an audience. It's an odd book, deliberately anti-intellectual and nihilist. Also, just about the perfect length. Anything more would have been too much. Worth a read, I'd say. 19. Miss Lonelyhearts by Nathanael West - The narrator is an advice columnist during the depression, a job viewed as a joke by the rest of the newspaper staff. Miss Lonelyhearts though finds the letters weighing on him, they're awful. Each one seeming worse than the others, exposing the horrible circumstances of humanity around him. He searches for some sense of relief, trying to escape in love, in drink, into the country, in meaningless affairs, and eventually religion. Unsurprisingly, none of it is up to the horrors inflicted by capitalism. While apolitical, West certainly does critique the system and the hopelessness of those at the bottom of it. Unfortunately, there's no solution here. Surprisingly funny at times, this was pretty good. And there, at a measly 4 books I sit. I'm way behind. Taking a break from West's nihilism, I'm knocking out a historical book now. Ben Nevis posted:1. Famous Men Who Never Lived by K Chess
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Apr 4, 2020 03:53
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February and March! 13. Nothing to See Here - Kevin Wilson 14. The Water Dancer - Ta-Nehisi Coates 15. Half of a Yellow Sun - Chimamande Ngozi Adichie 16. Gods of Jade and Shadow - Silvia Moreno-Garcia 17. Mary Toft; or the Rabbit Queen - Dexter Palmer 18. The End of the Hunt - Thomas Flanagan 19. Oblivion - David Foster Wallace 20. And Then There Were None - Agatha Christie 21. Your House Will Pay - Steph Cha 22. Girls Burn Brighter - Shobha Rao 23. We Cast a Shadow - Maurice Carlos Ruffin 24. Priory of the Orange Tree - Samantha Shannon 25. Red at the Bone - Jacqueline Woodson 26. The 7 ½ Deaths of Evelyn Hardcastle - Stuart Turton 27. Girl, Woman, Other - Bernardine Evanisto 28. Little, Big - John Crowley And here I am back after reading a ton of books over the last two months. (And it seems like I'll have the time to tackle a few more, given that I'm not leaving the house for the next month or so.) Highlights include Nothing to See Here a story about a nannying job watching two children who spontaneously combust; Half of a Yellow Sun, about the Biafran independence movement of the 1960s from the perspective of 4 people caught up in these events; Mary Toft; or, The Rabbit Queen, about a woman in the 1700s who purportedly gave birth to dead rabbits; The End of the Hunt, the final book in Thomas Flanagan's brilliant trilogy about Irish independence movements; And Then There Were None, probably the most famous locked-room mystery; Priory of the Orange Tree, a humongous dragon-centric fantasy tome that was just straight up good fun; The 7 1/2 Deaths of Evelyn Hardcastle, another mystery but with a Quantum Leap/Groundhog Day twist; and Little, Big, one of my favorite fantasies about an eccentric family that lives just on the borders of Faerieland. 1. Set a goal for number of books or another personal challenge. (28/50) 2. Of the books you read this year, make sure at least 20% of them are not written by men. 45% female (Shannon, Woodson, Evanisto, Adichie, Christie, Cha, Moreno-Garcia, Rao) 3. Of the books you read this year, make sure a least 20% of them are written by writers of colour. 40% POC (Coates, Adichie, Moreno-Garcia, Palmer, Cha, Rao, Ruffin, Woodson, Evanisto) 4. Of the books you read this year, make sure at least 5% of them are written by LGBT writers. 6% (Woodson) 5. Read a book from each decade of the 20th Century (1900s, 1910s etc). (1930s: And Then There Were None; 1940s, 60s, 80s covered) 6. Participate at least once in the TBB Book of the Month thread - read the book and post in the thread about that book! 7. Ask someone in this thread for a wildcard, then read it. 8. Read something by an indigenous author. 9. Read an author's first book. - Turton, "The 7 ½ Deaths of Evelyn Hardcastle" 10. 11. 12. Read something about food that isn't a cookbook. 13. Find the book you have kept on your shelf unread for longest. Read it. 14. Read a book you remember from your childhood. 15. Read some poetry. 16. Read a play. 17. Read a short story collection. - Oblivion 18. Read something that's only available online. 19. Read a prize-winning book. - Girl, Woman, Other (Booker) 20a&b. Read two books with the same (or very similar) titles. 21. 22. Read something banned/censored/challenged. 23. Chamberk fucked around with this message at 21:28 on Apr 4, 2020 |
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Apr 4, 2020 21:13
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Ended up reading more comic books in March than intended, but all were in my reading queue. Ichigeki Sacchu!! HoiHoi-san By Kunihiko Tanaka A fun, one volume manga about the different perspectives for a commercial roach killing product. I like how you get to see the viewpoints of obsessed fans who collect the accessories, a store clerk selling it, and two rival companies vying for control over the fashionable bug killing market. I also like how despite how cute they make the bug killing robots, the characters will admit how gross it is. Cleopatra in Space By Mike Maihack Haven’t seen a futuristic sci-fi comic with an Egyptian theme before, so that was pretty neat. Not sure if I will seek out the rest of the series, but if I run across the later volumes I may check them out. The Name of the Game By Will Eisner At first I didn’t like this comic because I wasn’t sure where it was going as I don’t typically check out drama stories. Once I got used to how the story follows a generation of marriage for social/economic gains and then passes on to the next, I became more invested in it and enjoyed it in the end. The Girl From the Other Side: Siúil, a Rún By Nagabe The art style in this manga was enjoyable as it had the sense of a gothic fairy tail. If I find more I may finish the series. SCP Foundation: Iris Through the Looking Glass By Akira Didn’t know about the SCP foundation until I saw this light novel and found it this was published in addition to a large fan-written collective database. It was awkward reading various parts as it kept pointing out the protagonist was a Japanese teen. How to Build a Dungeon: Book of the Demon King (Volumes 1-5) By Warau Yakan A train wreck I couldn’t look away from. The main character has little personality besides wanting to be a supreme dungeon ruler and uses magical sexual manipulation to build a harem with Stockholm syndrome. Only started reading this because a coworker mentioned she was reading this and was curious about the questionable content she kept finding in it. My Lesbian Experience with Loneliness By Nagata Kabai This was a pleasant surprise to read as it described the struggles of a Japanese woman trying to find social connection. It was a viewpoint I had not thought would be explored and despite being from a different cultural was relate-able. Grass By Keum Suk Gendry-Kim and Janet Hong It was difficult not to make comparisons with the comic Maus while reading this. It was knowledgeable to read about what it was like to be a comfort woman, but the author’s intention for doing so wasn’t clear. I had been looking forward to reading this since I found out about it months ago. It wasn't what I expected, but not a bad thing with the way the art can go between silly cartoonish to serious and mostly blacked out. Black Hole By Charles Burns Another one I had been meaning to read for a long while and again not what I expected. It was difficult to tell the difference between characters as they tended to look similar except for the STD mutants who seemed rather resigned to their shunned fate. The trippy dream sequences were creative and were interesting to try to piece how they fit into future scenes to come. Reading it one issue at a time coming out may have been a better experience rather than all in one go as a bound set. There are multiple characters that are followed in the story and it jumps between a lot. 10 Challenges to attempt: -Read Something about art/music. -Read a book you remember from your childhood. -Read some poetry. -Read a play. -Read a short story collection. -Read something that's only available online. -Read an author's first book. -Read a prize winning book. -Read a love story. -Read something banned/censored/challenged.
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Apr 7, 2020 03:53
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First update: Freshwater by Akwaeke Emezi An exploration of gender identity filtered through the lens of Igbo mythology and the way that intersects with modern Christian and secular worlds. Some really evocative prose and it plays with multiple perspectives in an interesting way. It's cool to see a story that would normally be framed as a kind of voyeuristic multiple-personalities type of thing get treated in a way that is more spiritual and even celebratory. Fear by Gabriel Chevalier A semi-autobiographical novel that follows a French soldier through the trenches of WW1. Probably the most brutal depiction of the war I've ever seen, and really hammers home how chaotic and senseless things were. Some of it is set in civilian towns as well, showing the lead-up and patriotic fervor at home slowly transforming into weariness and eventually even hostility / shame, which is an aspect of the war that I haven't seen addressed very often. The Palm Wine Drinkard and My Life in the Bush of Ghosts by Amos Tutuola The first African novel written in English that was published outside of Africa. Essentially a long series of interconnected traditional Yoruba folk tales fused with a more modern setting that follows the narrator's journey through the world of the dead. It's written in a very unique and pretty heavily idiomatic dialect that is not really representative of typical West African pidgin English - Tutuola only had six years of schooling and left to become a blacksmith after his father's death - but it's still surprisingly readable and adds to the effect of the book feeling very much like someone recording a story being told around a campfire. There's quite a bit of humor in it, and the different ghosts genuinely have some of the most bizarre and creative descriptions I've ever seen. Highly recommend it if you are at all interested in Nigerian literature. Her Body and Other Parties by Carmen Maria Machado Really strong short story collection that I would loosely describe as a blend of fabulism and horror - closest comparison I can think of is Angela Carter. There's also a novella, "Especially Heinous," that is framed as re-imagined episode summaries of every single episode of Law and Order SVU, which sounds extremely bizarre but was actually the standout piece for me. Just a very good eye for developing tension and dread. The Corpse Exhibition and Other Stories of Iraq by Hassan Blasim I enjoyed this one a lot - the invasion of Iraq is obviously a huge influence and the primary backdrop of these stories, but not in a typical way - I actually can't recall a single direct interaction any of the characters have with their occupiers, and in fact they're basically treated as just another element of background dressing for the exploration of Iraqi lives. There's a really strong thread of magical realism passing between these stories, and I was getting pretty major Gogol vibes throughout. The titular story is about a group of murderers who are dedicated to turning their victims into public tableaux in an effort to shock a population that is being increasingly desensitized to violence, which should give you an idea of the general tone of things. Lord of the Flies by William Golding I recently found out that somehow the version of this that I read in school was actually abridged, despite the complete novel being shorter than 200 pages, so I decided to give it a re-read. Still holds up well - if anything, it's more brutal than I remembered, and just very well-paced. I picked up a casebook edition with a bunch of additional essays included - most of them were pretty solid, and a nice departure from the usual boring Christian allegory angle that most criticism of the book revolves around. THE CHALLENGE: 1. Set a goal for number of books or another personal challenge. 6/30 1a. (Personal Challenge) Read one book from at least 20 different non-US countries. 4/20 2. Of the books you read this year, make sure at least 20% of them are not written by men. 33.3% 3. Of the books you read this year, make sure a least 20% of them are written by writers of colour. 66.7% 4. Of the books you read this year, make sure at least 5% of them are written by LGBT writers. 33.3% 5. Read a book from each decade of the 20th Century (1900s, 1910s etc). 1930s, 1950s, 2010s 6. Participate at least once in the TBB Book of the Month thread - read the book and post in the thread about that book! 7. Ask someone in this thread for a wildcard, then read it. 10. Read something historical. 11. Read something about art/music. 12. Read something about food that isn't a cookbook. 13. Find the book you have kept on your shelf unread for longest. Read it. 15. Read some poetry. 16. Read a play. 18. Read something that's only available online. 19. Read a prize-winning book. 20a&b. Read two books with the same (or very similar) titles. 21. Read a love story. 22. Read something banned/censored/challenged.
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Apr 13, 2020 21:36
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Grizzled Patriarch posted:The Corpse Exhibition and Other Stories of Iraq by Hassan Blasim corpse exhibition is ridiculously good. i think the more people who read it, the better, and not just because of how drat good it is. strong gogol and poe vibes. quote:7. Ask someone in this thread for a wildcard, then read it. i know you didn't ask for this per se, but if you liked the corpse exhibition, try the book of collateral damage by sinan antoon. it's two interwoven stories of the iraq war--one by a thinly-veiled version of the author, one by a traumatized bookseller in baghdad writing a "catalog" of the first minute of the war. it's a catalog of people and objects. artifacts of history, pieces of people's everyday lives. ancient documents, rugs, trees, a senile old "caliph" who "couldn't understand why his kingdom was uninhabited this morning."
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Apr 14, 2020 15:20
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Karenina posted:corpse exhibition is ridiculously good. i think the more people who read it, the better, and not just because of how drat good it is. strong gogol and poe vibes. Thanks for this! That sounds really interesting and I will absolutely take that as a wild card.
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Apr 15, 2020 03:25
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March 10. The Politics of Ballistic Missile Nonproliferation by Wyn G. Bowen (3/3/2020). Read for work. Fine if you're into the subject matter (on which book-length scholarship is kinda slim), but very dated and dry. 11. Containing Missile Proliferation: Strategic Technology, Security Regimes, and International Cooperation in Arms Control by Dinshaw Mistry (3/11/2020). Also read for work. 12. Turtle Diary by Russell Hoban (3/12/2020). I didn't get much of an impression of this book beyond "comfy" and "middle-aged people search for meaning in their mostly-empty lives." The foreword said it's hard to "get" this book unless you know what it's like to be middle-aged. I'll take their word for it. April 13. Nations and Nationalism since 1780 by E.J. Hobsbawm (4/11/2020). Fascinating overview of a subject I've been meaning to read more into. There are issues I wish he'd gone a bit more into (namely on the language issue), but that's what the footnotes are for. Recommended. 14. Le Malade imaginaire by Molière (4/16/2020). Hilarious. Remember to pair up your books of French plays with an adaptation on the screen for maximum effect and humor, because there's a lot of visual comedy that you can't get out of the text alone. There's also music involved, which you also can't get from the text alone. Recommended. 15. A History of Modern Ethiopia, 1855-1991 by Bahru Zewde (4/19/2020). I now know more about Ethiopia than I did before, which boiled down to the Second Italo-Ethiopian War, conflicts with Somalia, and good coffee. The writing is choppy and inconsistent, though, and the fact that the author tends to tie a fact to a specific source only when he's using a direct quotation is immensely frustrating. Every chapter gets a works cited at the end, but I'd like to know within the text what sources the author is drawing on and when. Tentatively recommended. 16. The Fur Hat by Vladimir Voinovich (4/21/2020). Hysterically funny late Soviet-era fiction in the spirit of Gogol. It's a short one and a good one. Strongly recommended. 17. War Is a Force That Gives Us Meaning by Chris Hedges (4/23/2020). I decided to make a U-turn from laughing my rear end off and feeling good in the time of corona by reading about war. That said, it's a good book--well-written, brutally honest, heartbreaking, and visceral. Lots of stories of people rushing into battle trying to be Rambo and then breaking down in tears, vomiting, wetting their pants, or turning out not to be the kind of heroes they fantasized about being. The uncomfortable honesty and humility in some of Hedges' own personal stories add to this. Strongly recommended. Progress 1. # of books: 17/75 (1 in French) 2. Of the books you read this year, make sure at least 20% of them are not written by men. 2/17 with Duong Thu Huong and Mary Harper. 3. Of the books you read this year, make sure a least 20% of them are written by writers of colour. 5/17 with Abdelrahman Munif, Duong Thu Huong, Ishmael Reed, Dinshaw Mistry, and Bahru Zewde. 4. Of the books you read this year, make sure at least 5% of them are written by LGBT writers. TBD 5. Read a book from each decade of the 20th Century (1900s, 1910s etc).: 1900s: 1910s: 1920s: 1940s: 1950s: 1960s: 7. Ask someone in this thread for a wildcard, then read it. Please. 8. Read something by an indigenous author. TBD 11. Read something about art/music. TBD 12. Read something about food that isn’t a cookbook. TBD 13. Find the book you have kept on your shelf unread for longest. Read it. TBD 14. Read a book you remember from your childhood. TBD 18. Read something that’s only available online. TBD 19. Read a prize-winning book. Not totally sure if I've already done this or not. 20a&b. Read two books with the same (or very similar) titles. TBD 21. Read a love story. TBD?
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Apr 24, 2020 01:01
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Hey folks, hope you're all safe and healthy! Quarantine can really gently caress with our brains, so don't worry if your reading pace has gone weird these past weeks. In the spirit of my last suggestion post:Gertrude Perkins posted:books of the 1900s! and freebooter posted:Some standout [prize-winners] from the past: Let's talk about works you can only find online! This is less of a concrete List Of Things, and more some places to start. Obviously, the big one is kindle/ebook-only releases - small-time authors, self-published works, that sort of thing. You could also go for work that's been out of print for so long that the best way to find it is in a digitised form! A recent favourite of the latter category would be Paul Slansky's The Clothes Have No Emperor, a brain-melting diary of the Reagan years. There are a lot of short stories that are only published online - Here is a HuffPo list of short stories from a few years ago, for instance - though the more high-profile ones are often collected into physical compilations. There are also web serials - they're like webcomics, but they're mostly just words! The big example of this would be the colossal Worm, by John C. "Wildbow" McCrae, but there are lots of smaller works too! Check out the bizarre Unsong by Scott Alexander, or Reddit's own Chrysalis. You could also look for more experimental novels and art pieces - projects that use HTML, for instance, like Cate Wurtz's ongoing small-town horror comic series Crow Cillers. Sometimes you get more established authors turning to online platforms, too: David Mitchell's short story The Right Sort was written on Twitter, and can be found collected here. This is all just scratching the surface of course - there's a whole universe of online literature, from novels to poetry to longform nonfiction. Maybe folks can share/link some of their own favourites too!
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Apr 27, 2020 16:37
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Apr 28, 2020 16:44
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quote:1 & 2 - My Brother's Husband, books 1 & 2, by Gengoroh Tagame 16 - Chubz: The Demonization of My Working Arse, by Huw Lemmey/Spitzenprodukte. Revolutionary and pornographic in equal measure, in the literal definitions of those words. It's great fun! A little bittersweet reading this six years after the fact, given the shifts in the British political landscape. Had this on my radar for ages, really happy that it lives up to my expectations. Maybe not one to lend your mum though. 17 - Rogue Male, by Geoffrey Household. Read this in one sitting! An exciting, gripping and very satisfying novel of a man pursued by foreign agents after an assassination attempt. It's readable and lightly pulpy, and Household manages to make skulking around the English countryside into a real page-turner. The protagonist is pushed to his limits but rarely feels invulnerable. 18 - Zac's Haunted House, by Dennis Cooper. Less a novel and more a found-footage collage, Cooper uses dozens of GIFs harvested from the Internet to create a moody, atmospheric conceptual horror piece. The clips are sourced from everywhere from old online memes (remember Domo-kun?) to anime to gory horror films and pornography, and are arranged fairly effectively to convey mood and emotion. What plot there is appears to be your standard "defeat the monsters inside yourself and push through to defeat the monsters outside yourself" sort of thing. There are some fun juxtapositions of imagery, but often the choices feel jumbled and incoherent. As a proof-of-concept, this definitely points towards this medium having potential for really powerful artistic expression...but I didn't feel much at all by the end of this, other than "huh, neat". 1. Set a goal for number of books or another personal challenge. - 18/52 2. Of the books you read this year, make sure at least 1/3 of them are not written by men. - 8 - 4, 7, 8, 9, 10, 12, 14, 15 3. Of the books you read this year, make sure a least 1/3 of them are written by writers of colour. - 6 - 1, 2, 6, 8, 14, 15 4. Of the books you read this year, make sure at least 1/4 of them are written by LGBT writers. - 7 - 1, 2, 8, 13, 15, 16, 18 5. Read a book from each decade of the 20th Century (1900s, 1910s etc). 1900 - 5 (1907) 1910 - 1920 - 4 (1920) 1930 - 17 (1939) 1940 - 1950 - 1960 - 7 (1967) 1970 - 1980 - 1990 - 7. Ask someone in this thread for a wildcard, then read it. 8. Read something by an indigenous author. 11. Read something about art/music. 12. Read something about food that isn't a cookbook. 13. Find the book you have kept on your shelf unread for longest. Read it. 14. Read a book you remember from your childhood. 15. Read some poetry. 16. Read a play. 19. Read a prize-winning book. 20a&b. Read two books with the same (or very similar) titles. 23. Read a book from a country you've never visited. Also hey, someone give me a wildcard!
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May 1, 2020 03:02
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17. Permafrost by Alastair Reynolds. An engaging, tight time travel novella about people from the 2080s trying to avert the apocalypse. Reynolds is always a solid read for me and I enjoyed this even though, in retrospect, everything theoretically interesting in the book takes place off-screen. 18. House of Stairs by William Sleator. Short YA novel from the 1970s which I vaguely remembered reading in primary school, about five kids who wake up in a mysterious structure. Didn't mind it, nothing to write home about. 19. The Postman Always Rings Twice by James M. Cain. I thought this had been sitting on my TBR pile because it was one of the Time 100, but on closer inspection it's not. Not sure where I picked it up. Anyway, it's a really good short crime thriller from the 1930s which sets a cracking pace - I think it's like page 10 when the protagonist and a woman he just met are already conspiring to kill her husband, and none of it feels rushed or badly paced. Enjoyed it a lot. Still don't have a clue what the title means. 20. On A Sunbeam by Tillie Walden. This is a graphic novel which was quite highly praised, about a young woman joining a spaceship crew that restores old structures, intercut with flashbacks to her first romance in school. I think it's objectively good and I can see the appeal to a certain kind of reader - the New Yorker gave it a rave review, FWIW - but it wasn't really my cup of tea; it's a bit too saccharine. Fans of Becky Chambers would probably dig it. It's available to read for free online, but is also in book form so I don't think that counts for that particular challenge. And it's a good thing I read four very short books in the first five days of the month, because the rest of April was consumed by: 21. The Stand by Stephen King. The uncut edition, which takes up a whopping 1,400+ pages. I read the originally published edition (a mere baby at something like 800 pages) in high school and I think I enjoyed it even more this time around. It's self-indulgent, weird, mildly racist, completely shifts gears halfway through to become a different kind of story, and the plot is one gigantic deus ex machina... yet I love it. It's an absolute classic. It's also the first really long book I've read in a while, and it's been a long time since I've felt that bittersweet satisfaction at finally finishing something that's been a constant companion on your bedside table for a month. 1. Set a goal for number of books or another personal challenge. 21/60 2. Of the books you read this year, make sure at least 20% of them are not written by men. 8/12 3. Of the books you read this year, make sure a least 20% of them are written by writers of colour. 2/12 (Chinua Achebe and Ted Chiang) 4. Of the books you read this year, make sure at least 5% of them are written by LGBT writers. 2/3 (Alison Bechdel and Tillie Walden) 5. Read a book from each decade of the 20th Century (1900s, 1910s etc). 6/10 (30s, 50s, 60s, 70s, 80s, 90s)
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May 1, 2020 04:05
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I know I do not update on here (I should), but I personally find myself unable to read. I am doing a lot of other hobbies I kept putting off, but reading just isn't appealing to me right now. Which is bad since I work for a bookstore. :|
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May 2, 2020 02:32
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5 books. Better than March, but I need to get faster to have any hope of finishing. Just after simultaneously working and doing childcare all day I don't really have the attention to read like normal. It was a solid month though, with nothing bad. The Seven Husbands of Evelyn Hugo was probably the best book I've read so far during the quarantine. Objectively, I've read better, but escaping into old Hollywood was just what I needed. 20. Erebus: One Ship, Two Epic Voyages, and the Greatest Naval Mystery of All Time by Michael Palin - Yeah, that Michael Palin. He traces the Erebus through it's initial trip to find the South Pole and then it's doomed voyage to try and find the Northwest Passage. It's an interesting look at British exploration in the early 1800s. There's a lot about ship life, various scientific studies taken, and also just general attitude of Britain and why it wanted it explore. A solid read, especially for people who like naval history, I think. 21. A Cool Million by Nathanael West - This is a satire of the Horatio Alger type story, where a young man sets out to make his fortune and save the family home and winds up used, abused, stripped of the little money he has as well as countless other tragedies. It's bleak man. Also humorous at times. 22. The Day of the Locust by Nathanael West - A scathing look at the shallowness and scrabbling of 1930s hollywood. Everything West did could be described as scathing. 23. The Seven Husbands of Evenlyn Hugo by Taylor Jenkins Reid - A young reported is tabbed by screen legend Evelyn Hugo for the first interview she's given in ages. It's a chance to make her name as a reporter. Why her? And she finds out Evelyn will finally open up about her infamous seven husbands. What happened and why there were so many? It dives into Evelyn's machinations to achieve fame and remain in the spotlight. Something about this really took me. It's probably just blatant escapism, but I needed it. Evelyn herself is interesting, the ongoing mystery of why she requests the narrator is as well. Not my usual, but a good change of pace. Conveniently, also a love story. 24. Just Mercy by Brian Stevenson - Now a big movie! This alternates chapters telling the story of Brian setting up the Equal Justice Initiative and his work to get unfairly convicted people new trials. It also deals specifically with the trial and efforts at retrial for Walter McMillan. A good read, and a depressing one. If you ever thought our justice system was fair, well, I've got news for you. Ben Nevis posted:1. Famous Men Who Never Lived by K Chess
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May 4, 2020 16:43
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April! Well, at least I got a decent bit read while staying at home? 29. Flashman and the Redskins (Flashman #7) - George Macdonald Fraser 30. The Institute - Stephen King 31. Too Like the Lightning (Terra Ignota #1) - Ada Palmer 32. A Girl Returned - Donatella di Pietrantonio 33. Frankenstein - Mary Shelley 34. Ninth House - Leigh Bardugo 35. Villette - Charlotte Bronte Of these, the standouts were Ninth House, a paranormal thriller set among Yale's secret societies, A Girl Returned, about a girl who's returned to her birth family when her adoptive mother gives her up; and Too Like the Lightning, the beginning of an utterly bizarre but very intriguing science fiction series. If anyone is in the mood for some serious Bronte, Villette is wondrously well-written but tremendously depressing. Classic! 1. Set a goal for number of books or another personal challenge. (35/50) 2. Of the books you read this year, make sure at least 20% of them are not written by men. 51% female (Palmer, di Pietrantonio, Shelley, Bardugo, Bronte) 3. Of the books you read this year, make sure a least 20% of them are written by writers of colour. 31% POC 4. Of the books you read this year, make sure at least 5% of them are written by LGBT writers. 6% 5. Read a book from each decade of the 20th Century (1900s, 1910s etc). (1930s, 1940s, 60s, 80s, 90s covered) 6. Participate at least once in the TBB Book of the Month thread - read the book and post in the thread about that book! 7. Ask someone in this thread for a wildcard, then read it. 8. Read something by an indigenous author. 9. 10. 11. 12. Read something about food that isn't a cookbook. 13. Find the book you have kept on your shelf unread for longest. Read it. 14. Read a book you remember from your childhood. 15. Read some poetry. 16. Read a play. 17. 18. Read something that's only available online. 19. 20a&b. Read two books with the same (or very similar) titles. 21. 22. Read something banned/censored/challenged. 23.
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May 4, 2020 20:03
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Double update because I only read two in March so I figured I'd just combine them: 9. The Fellowship of the Rings by J.R.R. Tolkien - I don't think there's much I can say that others haven't already but I really enjoyed this. I've seen the movies but it's been ages so it's cool to actually read these books. I totally get why they aren't for everyone though. 10. Your Inner Fish by Neil Shubin - This book is about how certain physical characteristics evolved in humans tracking back to the early vertebrates and sometimes even before that. It's interesting but I was expecting a book about only the skeleton when that's really just a single chapter, with other chapters devoted to other traits. Good overview though. 11. Qualityland by Marc-Uwe Kling - I feel like the idea (what if Amazon ran a country, essentially) was better than the actual execution. It was entertaining and I get why it's getting a show but it doesn't really break any new ground. 12. Black Klansman by Ron Stallworth - I haven't seen the movie but there honestly wasn't much substance to this so I doubt you'd miss anything watching it over the book. It's definitely an interesting story but he really had to work to make it book length (and even then it's less than 200 pages). 13. The Southern Book Club's Guide to Slaying Vampires by Grady Hendrix - I'm not really into horror but I read his previous book, We Sold Our Souls, last year and I handled that so I checked this out too. It doesn't lean into super gory body horror (though there's definitely a little of that) and mainly is about a slow, creeping horror of being helpless and alone against a monster. It works really really well and I highly recommend you check this out if it sounds at all appealing. 14. The Light Fantastic by Terry Pratchett - I know a lot of people say to skip the first two Discworld novels but I really enjoyed both. Looking forward to the rest for sure. 15. Trail of Lightning by Rebecca Roanhorse - I'm still pretty conflicted about this. On the one hand, it has a very unique premise - Navajo mythology end of the current world/beginning of the next, with gods and monsters and magic returning. On the other hand, this is like peak young adult, and I've read my share of YA fantasy but this is every trope you can think of and more. Plus there's basically no resolution to any of the plot threads and no motivation given for any of the antagonists (and barely any for the protagonists). There's a sequel and part of me wants to read it to see if anything is resolved but I feel like there's better things I could spend my time on. Challenges: 1. Set a goal for number of books or another personal challenge. 15/55 - Catching up! 2. Of the books you read this year, make sure at least 20% of them are not written by men. 2/~11 needed 3. Of the books you read this year, make sure a least 20% of them are written by writers of colour. 2/~11 needed 4. Of the books you read this year, make sure at least 20% of them are written by LGBT writers. 2/~11 needed 5. Read a book from each decade of the 20th Century (1900s, 1910s etc). So far I've got 30s, 50s, 80s, and 90s 6. Participate at least once in the TBB Book of the Month thread - read the book and post in the thread about that book! 7. Ask someone in this thread for a wildcard, then read it. Fulfilled by Trail of Lightning. Fulfilled by The Hobbit. 10. Read something historical. Fulfilled by Me. Fulfilled by Milk! 13. Find the book you have kept on your shelf unread for longest. Read it. 14. Read a book you remember from your childhood. 15. Read some poetry. 16. Read a play. 17. Read a short story collection. 18. Read something that's only available online. 19. Read a prize-winning book. Gideon the Ninth is nominated for the Nebula so we'll see! 20a&b. Read two books with the same (or very similar) titles. 21. Read a love story. 22. Read something banned/censored/challenged. 23. Read a book from a country you've never visited.
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May 7, 2020 15:44
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So Far to 10/5: Cormac McCarthy - Blood Meridian: I'm almost there towards reaching an enlightened state about this book, I think. I have started reading study guides after each chapter to try and get it out. The ending is fantastic, the prose indescribable. But I haven't put it all together. Yet. One of my favorite novels and I'm glad I re read it after 6 or so years. Arkady Martine - A Memory called Empire. A good first novel. Has some structural issues to it but I am glad I read it. Satisfies critera 2 & 4. Glen Cook - The Black Company. Very pulpy, very fun. Liked it a lot and smashed through it in record time. Raymond E Feist - Rage of a Demon King. Pulpy fun comfort food for me, I remember reading this as a high schooler after school when I had to wait in the library to get picked up by my parents. With older eyes it doesn't stand up as well as it used to but it is still 'immensely readable' as someone put it in the Sci Fi thread. Raymond E Feist - Shards of a Broken Crown. - See above. 1. Set a goal for number of books or another personal challenge. ~5/10 2. Of the books you read this year, make sure at least 20% of them are not written by men. ~1/5 3. Of the books you read this year, make sure a least 20% of them are written by writers of colour. ~0/5 <,-- This sucks! Gotta get on it. 4. Of the books you read this year, make sure at least 5% of them are written by LGBT writers. ~1/5 5. Read a book from each decade of the 20th Century (1900s, 1910s etc). 80s, 90s are currently covered 6. Participate at least once in the TBB Book of the Month thread - read the book and post in the thread about that book! 7. Ask someone in this thread for a wildcard, then read it. 8. Read something by an indigenous author. 10. Read something historical. 11. Read something about art/music. 12. Read something about food that isn't a cookbook. 13. Find the book you have kept on your shelf unread for longest. Read it. (Nb: This is a path to power and I AM SO CLOSE GODDAMNIT just need to find time.) 15. Read some poetry. 16. Read a play. 17. Read a short story collection. 18. Read something that's only available online. 19. Read a prize-winning book. 20a&b. Read two books with the same (or very similar) titles. 21. Read a love story. 22. Read something banned/censored/challenged. 23. Read a book from a country you've never visited.
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May 10, 2020 12:54
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Been a hell of a month, huh gang?quote:
I read six books in May: 19 - The Mushroom at the End of the World: On the Possibility of Life in Capitalist Ruins, by Anna Lowenhaupt Tsing. A dense, diverse and fascinating exploration of the natural and human worlds under "salvage" capitalism. Using the matsutake mushroom industry as her focus, Tsing explores several different facets of human and non-human experience: immigration and assimilation to the United States; the evolution of fungi; the cultural memories of food; the value of "freedom" and "work"; international scientific/ecological cooperation, or lack thereof...and a lot more. I admit some of it went over my head a little, despite my background in cultural studies. But her storytelling and enthusiasm are potent, and I found myself caring about pine trees more than I ever thought I would. I'm really happy I picked this up, and have already recommended it to a few people. Maybe someday I'll actually get to eat matsutake myself... 20 & 21 - Dorohedoro, Vol. 2 & 3, by Q. Hayashida. Getting back into this series and falling back in love with the grungy, filthy style of it. Quirky takes on a zombie outbreak and a high-stakes boxing match, with some cool and delightfully unpleasant dark magical rituals. More grim spectacle and gorgeous ruination, and the little moments of levity bring out the personality of the whole thing. Will definitely continue this. 22 - Tender Buttons, by Gertrude Stein. My first time reading her, and maybe this wasn't the best place to start. This short book is a collection of prose poetry that reads like Markov-generated word salad, but with added wistful tenderness (or tender wistfulness). There are some beautiful passages and a lot of it lends itself to being read out loud, and I think I understand what Stein was doing with the composition of the text, but a lot of it just washed over me without leaving much behind. I'm not upset that I read it, at all, I just think it mostly went over my head. 23 - Afterburn, by S. L. Viehl. This was hard to get through, but I ended up enjoying it a fair amount. Picked up an uncorrected proof copy on a whim at a thrift shop, and was met with a dense wall of alien terminology and opaque military SF. We've got a whole lot of alien fish people, but also bug- and dog-people, different kinds of humans mixed in for flavour. There's a subplot that amounts to attempted genocide, there's an evil matriarch who tortures her daughter, there's fraught relationship drama, there a cartoonish French character, and there's a race of dark-skinned desert-dwellers who practice human sacrifice. For a novel about a peace summit there are more scenes set in cafeterias than in the halls of power. And yet somehow it holds together and wraps up neatly by the end?? Very strange. Plenty of flaws, but plenty I liked. 24 - Television Was A Baby Crawling Toward That Death-Chamber, by Allen Ginsberg. Short but powerful poetry collecting works from across Ginsberg's life. The title work is a beautiful, beautiful piece of mid-20th-century paranoia, and there's a great little poem about how annoying phones are. Also some much less savoury work - sex, bodily functions, the juxtaposition of gluttony and war crime. Nice. 1. Set a goal for number of books or another personal challenge. - 24/52 2. Of the books you read this year, make sure at least 1/3 of them are not written by men. - 13 - 4, 7, 8, 9, 10, 12, 14, 15, 19, 20, 21, 22, 23 3. Of the books you read this year, make sure a least 1/3 of them are written by writers of colour. - 9 - 1, 2, 6, 8, 14, 15, 19, 20, 21 4. Of the books you read this year, make sure at least 1/4 of them are written by LGBT writers. - 9 - 1, 2, 8, 13, 15, 16, 18, 22, 24 5. Read a book from each decade of the 20th Century (1900s, 1910s etc). 1900 - 5 (1907) 1910 - 22 (1914) 1920 - 4 (1920) 1930 - 17 (1939) 1940 - 1950 - 1960 - 7 (1967) 1970 - 1980 - 1990 - 7. Ask someone in this thread for a wildcard, then read it. 8. Read something by an indigenous author. 11. Read something about art/music. 13. Find the book you have kept on your shelf unread for longest. Read it. 14. Read a book you remember from your childhood. 16. Read a play. 19. Read a prize-winning book. 20a&b. Read two books with the same (or very similar) titles. 23. Read a book from a country you've never visited. Also, somebody please WILDCARD ME, BABY!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! Gertrude Perkins fucked around with this message at 10:25 on May 30, 2020 |
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May 30, 2020 09:44
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22. The Good Cop by Justine Ford. Girlfriend bought this for me on a whim a while ago because I'm studying criminal justice. It's about Ron Iddles, a renowned homicide detective in Melbourne who started in the 1980s, and was credited with modernising and revolutionising a lot of the department's techniques and practices before retiring in the 2010s. He had an interesting career and plenty of interesting stories to tell, but Ford tells it in the most lifeless, hum-drum, Herald Sun weekend lift-out style of journalism possible. 23. Old Man’s War by John Scalzi. Fun space opera romp which I enjoyed, despite the tendency of the characters to talk like early 2000s forum users, all with the same identical sense of humour. 24. Their Eyes Were Watching God by Zora Neale Hurston. I understand why this is a classic but hoo boy was it not for me. 25. The Letter of Marque by Patrick O’Brian. Latest in the Aubrey-Maturin series, which I'm slowly working my way through, rationing the books because I love them so dearly. The series is honestly one of the crowning literary accomplishments of the 20th century and if you've never heard of it I implore you to check it out. 26. Waiting for the Barbarians by J.M. Coetzee. I love Coetzee's writing on a sentence-by-sentence basis, or paragraph by paragraph, but his novels as a whole always leave me feeling a bit cold. Or maybe it's just these early allegorical ones; I loved Disgrace. 27. The Second Sleep by Robert Harris. A post-apocalyptic tale which had me engaged all the way through, but ultimately didn't leave me feeling like Harris had done anything new or notable with the genre. 28. Journalism by Joe Sacco. A collection of Sacco's short cartoon pieces examining the depths of human brutality: Yugoslavian war crimes, Chechen refugees, the IDF in the Gaza Strip, etc. It's important journalism, but ultimately left me doubtful as to whether the medium added anything which regular feature journalism wouldn't, beyond the novelty of it. 1. Set a goal for number of books or another personal challenge. 28/60 2. Of the books you read this year, make sure at least 20% of them are not written by men. 10/12 3. Of the books you read this year, make sure a least 20% of them are written by writers of colour. 3/12 (Chinua Achebe, Ted Chiang, Zora Neale Hurston) 4. Of the books you read this year, make sure at least 5% of them are written by LGBT writers. 2/3 (Alison Bechdel and Tillie Walden) 5. Read a book from each decade of the 20th Century (1900s, 1910s etc). 6/10 (30s, 50s, 60s, 70s, 80s, 90s) Gertrude Perkins posted:Also, somebody please WILDCARD ME, BABY!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! Rattle me off the English-speaking countries you've never visited and I'll wildcard you something to meet 19 and 23.
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Jun 3, 2020 01:20
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6 books! My pace is picking up. That's largely due to The Gone World being a super fast and gripping read though. Still, it's progress. I also knocked out a book from the 90s, and one about music (somewhat). Also maintaining a decent ratio for the first 3. All in all good books. I'm going to have to read about 12 books this month to be on schedule by the halfway point. Yeesh. 25. The Night Tiger by Yangsze Choo - I don't know where I'd gotten this recommendation. In retrospect it embarrassingly might have been from an article about Reese Witherspoon's book club. Yeah, I'm basic. In 1930s Malaysia a young woman finds a finger bone at the dance club where she moonlights for money. A young boy is tasked with recovering the finger bone of the dead doctor for whom he was a houseboy. Naturally these are going to intersect. Also there's maybe weretigers. I was really hoping for some sort of magical realism like Kurniawan's Man Tiger or Couto's Confessions of a Lioness. It was not. I spent like most of the book thinking it was going that way and was pretty disappointed when it wound up being a straight murder mystery (with a solution I didn't particular love). Bah. Maybe you'll like it better if you know that going in. 26. Black Betty by Walter Mosely - Easy Rawlins #4. Yeah, they're still good. It's conceivable I get tired of these, but not soon unless the quality drops way off. 27. Days by Moonlight by Andre Alexis - A young man and a professor travel around rural Canada searching for a mysteriously dead or vanished poet. There's definitely a Gulliver's Travels vibe here, with many of the towns being absurd and sketched in a way to emphasize attitudes on race, poverty, indigenous peoples, and other quirks of Canadian culture. And then for the last quarter or third it's about miracles and religious experience. It didn't quite jibe. I feel like either Alexis or I lost the thread a bit. Even so, a pretty decent read. 28. Sounds like Titanic by Jessica Chiccehitto Hindman - A memoir of a good by not professional good violinist who spent several years touring the country with an unnamed (yet easily discerned) composer performing concerts very quietly with a CD player cranked up very loudly over her. She uses this to discuss the necessary comforts of a constructed reality in post 9/11 America. This starts off wild and somewhat humorous, and then in her unreal world she starts experiencing panic attacks and it all gets real. Would recommend. 29. The Altruists by Andrew Ridker - This made some best of 2019 lists, had some very good reviews, and yet has like 3.3 on Goodreads. Curious. It's about a family 2 years after the death of the mother. They're all in crisis, struggling with debts, professional dissatisfaction, eating disorders, and depression. The estranged father calls everyone home to butter them up and beg for money to save the family home. The book is all about leading up to that question. It looks at their relationships and formative moments to build up to why they are all where the are now, and the question is not so much money, but whether they can fix it. Find some degree of satisfaction, of self-actualization, and if there's any hope of making it as a family. Fairly humorous and moderately moving, I found it to be a pretty good book. It had some issues, mostly a little too clever at times, and it again deals with the problems of privileged well off people, but still, much better than a 3.3. 30. The Gone World by Tom Sweterlitsch - Apparently if there are ever movies again this will be one. Time travel and murder mysteries intersect with the possible end of all human life. Somewhat dizzying, this jumps in space and time from 1997 to 2015 to the far future, with the same characters recurring at different times. Solid, exciting read. Ben Nevis posted:1. Famous Men Who Never Lived by K Chess
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Jun 3, 2020 04:58
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freebooter posted:
New Zealand, Australia, South Africa...most of the Caribbean, oh, and Belize. Which I learned today has English as its official language???
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Jun 3, 2020 23:24
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Gertrude Perkins posted:New Zealand, Australia, South Africa...most of the Caribbean, oh, and Belize. Which I learned today has English as its official language??? OK, depending on how confident you feel with reaching your overall goal you can have an option of a short one or a longer one, both IMO truly excellent novels: Disgrace by J.M. Coetzee (a Nobel laureate) which won the 1999 Booker Prize - South Africa, 218 pages Oscar and Lucinda by Peter Carey (who bloody well should be a Nobel laureate) which won the 1988 Booker Prize - Australia, 528 pages
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Jun 4, 2020 04:29
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I have been reading in spurts for April and May, and didn’t even post my April update. I read some books, and they were pretty good. Now I’m gonna be focusing more on non-fiction I think. April 10. This is How You Lose the Time War by Amal El-Mohtar and Max Gladstone. This was quite good. A back and forth between two opposing sides of the war in/of time. As the story progressed we could see the characters becoming closer and falling in love. Just a really interesting read. I’m not usually a big fan of science fiction but this was great. 11. Journey of the River: Essays of Shin, Young-Bok by Shin Young-bok Essays by the author written during his time in prison. While there were some very interesting things here, a lot of it was too philosophical for me. Too much thinking makes the brain hurt! Were some good scathing critiques of capitalism though, and that’s always fun. May 12. No One Writes Back by Jang Eun-jin This was a story about a guy who goes around writing letters. It was a cute book, but at the same time seemed somewhat pointless. It felt like there was a deepness that was meant to be felt that just wasn’t there. I enjoyed it, but I felt like the poignant scenes missed me. 13. Consider This: Moments in My Writing Life After Which Everything Was Different by Chuck Palahniuk A book about writing by the author, interspersed with his own stories about life as a writer. Honestly, the stories that he told were much more interesting than the tips for writing. I have no aspiration to be a writer, so that part didn’t really appeal to me. 14. The Nickel Boys by Colson Whitehead. Life in Florida around the civil rights movement. Pretty gross and brutal at times, but also very meaningful I think. There were quite a few passages that really stuck out to me and made me think. Good book. 1. Set a goal for number of books or another personal challenge. 14/36 Personal challenge: 20% Korean authors. 2/14 Personal challenge: 20% nonfiction. 4/14 2. Of the books you read this year, make sure at least 20% of them are not written by men.3/14 3. Of the books you read this year, make sure a least 20% of them are written by writers of colour.7/14 4. Of the books you read this year, make sure at least 5% of them are written by LGBT writers.2/14 5. Read a book from each decade of the 20th Century (1900s, 1910s etc). 1900s 1920s 1930s 1970s 1980s 1990s 6. Participate at least once in the TBB Book of the Month thread - read the book and post in the thread about that book! 7. Ask someone in this thread for a wildcard, then read it. 8. Read something by an indigenous author. 10. Read something historical. 12. Read something about food that isn't a cookbook. 13. Find the book you have kept on your shelf unread for longest. Read it. 16. Read a play. 17. Read a short story collection. 18. Read something that's only available online. 20a&b. Read two books with the same (or very similar) titles. 22. Read something banned/censored/challenged. 23. Read a book from a country you've never visited.
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Jun 5, 2020 01:08
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cryptoclastic posted:14. The Nickel Boys by Colson Whitehead. I've had The Underground Railroad sitting on my bedside table for months and still haven't got around to it, but I just realised that Whitehead won the Pulitzer for both that in 2017 and this in 2020, which is pretty impressive. Apart from being in quick succession that makes him one of only four writers in history to win it twice, alongside Tarkington, Faulkner and Updike.
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Jun 5, 2020 02:05
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16. Ravenor Returned and 17. Ravenor Rogue by Dan Abnett - Just some pulpy sci-fi mindless reading. That's quarantine baby 18. The Fishermen by Chigozie Obioma - I can recognize this book as being very well written but also it's not my thing. I get why it's so highly lauded though. 19. Finna by Nino Cipri - This is a novella, which I didn't realize when I started reading it, and it really felt rushed for lack of a better word. Which is too bad because the premise is pretty great and I feel like there was a lot of room for more to happen that just...didn't. 20. Heir to the Jedi by Kevin Hearne - This book felt like a video game complete with sidequests and prereqs before the real quest could start. Once the actual story got going it was pretty good though. 21. Crown of Midnight by Sarah J. Maas - Second part of the Throne of Glass series I started last year, and it was pretty slow at times but it started ramping up towards the end. Not bad overall but I think the first book was better, hopefully part 3 keeps up the momentum the end of this one had. 22. Origin by Dan Brown - I genuinely love these books and this was one of the better ones for me. 23. The Man in the High Castle by Philip K. Dick - This is my "book you've owned for the longest unread" challenge and I'm kicking myself for waiting so long to read it. I read Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep in high school (I'm 31 now) and A Scanner Darkly a few years later, but haven't read any other PKD since, which is a shame. This book wasn't entirely what I was expecting but all the little pieces come together to form something really unique and bizarre in a very good way. I have all the PKD novels thanks to a Kindle sale and I'm definitely going to try to read him more frequently. Challenges: 1. Set a goal for number of books or another personal challenge. 23/55 - On track 2. Of the books you read this year, make sure at least 20% of them are not written by men. 4/~11 needed 3. Of the books you read this year, make sure a least 20% of them are written by writers of colour. 3/~11 needed 4. Of the books you read this year, make sure at least 20% of them are written by LGBT writers. 3/~11 needed 5. Read a book from each decade of the 20th Century (1900s, 1910s etc). So far I've got 30s, 50s, 60s, 80s, and 90s 6. Participate at least once in the TBB Book of the Month thread - read the book and post in the thread about that book! 7. Ask someone in this thread for a wildcard, then read it. Fulfilled by Trail of Lightning. Fulfilled by The Hobbit. 10. Read something historical. Fulfilled by Me. Fulfilled by Milk! Fulfilled by The Man in the High Castle 14. Read a book you remember from your childhood. 15. Read some poetry. 16. Read a play. 17. Read a short story collection. 18. Read something that's only available online. 19. Read a prize-winning book. 20a&b. Read two books with the same (or very similar) titles. 21. Read a love story. 22. Read something banned/censored/challenged. Fulfilled by The Fishermen Humerus fucked around with this message at 01:25 on Jun 6, 2020 |
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Jun 6, 2020 01:21
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freebooter posted:OK, depending on how confident you feel with reaching your overall goal you can have an option of a short one or a longer one, both IMO truly excellent novels: Oh, thanks! I imagine once lockdown lifts I'll do a big physical book-shop and those two are now at the top of my list to get hold of.
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Jun 6, 2020 14:36
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Hope you enjoy! I picked them also because they're not just set in their respective countries, they're fundamentally "about" those countries. Disgrace initially seems to be a very individual and universal story, but eventually it definitely has things to say about post-apartheid South Africa. Oscar and Lucinda has some beautifully evocative writing about Australia and, from memory, a lot to say about Australian cultural cringe and the British/Australian mother country/colony relationship - though not as much as his preceding novel Illywhacker, which puts those themes front and centre and is my favourite novel of his, but alas it's not a prize winner - it was nominated for the Booker but lost to The Bone People by New Zealander Keri Hulme, which I've had on my shelf for a while and am planning to read fairly soon. Coronavirus lockdown really has been useful for me to work my way through the backlog of unread books I have on my shelves.
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Jun 7, 2020 11:40
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May! 36. Seven Surrenders (Terra Ignota #2) - Ada Palmer 37. A Head Full of Ghosts - Paul Tremblay 38. Spinning Silver - Naomi Novik 39. The White Mountains (Tripods #1) - John Christopher 40. The City of Gold and Lead (Tripods #2) - John Christopher 41. The Pool of Fire (Tripods #3) - John Christopher 42. The Will to Battle (Terra Ignota #3) - Ada Palmer 43. 10,000 Doors of January - Alix E. Harrow 44. Go, Went, Gone - Jenny Erpenbeck 45. City of Brass (Daevabad #1) - S. A. Chakraborty 46. The Lone Ranger and Tonto Fistfight in Heaven - Sherman Alexie 47. A Canticle for Leibowitz - Walter Miller 48. A Woman is No Man - Etaf Rum I got a ton read this month; among the highlights were the Tripod Trilogy (which I read in elementary school and LOVED - a precursor to all those YA dystopias), the remainder of the Terra Ignota series, and Ten Thousand Doors of January, which was a lovely little book about magic doors. A Head Full of Ghosts was a pretty messed up ghost story, while Go, Went, Gone was a wonderful book about a retired man in Germany getting involved in dealing with the refugee crisis. 1. Set a goal for number of books or another personal challenge. (48/50) 2. Of the books you read this year, make sure at least 20% of them are not written by men. 52% female (Palmer, Novik, Harrow, Erpenbeck, Chakraborty, Rum) 3. Of the books you read this year, make sure a least 20% of them are written by writers of colour. 25% POC (Rum) 4. Of the books you read this year, make sure at least 5% of them are written by LGBT writers. 4% 5. Read a book from each decade of the 20th Century (1900s, 1910s etc). (1930s, 1940s, 60s, 80s, 90s covered) 6. Participate at least once in the TBB Book of the Month thread - read the book and post in the thread about that book! 7. Ask someone in this thread for a wildcard, then read it. 8. Read something by an indigenous author. - Alexie 9. Read an author's first book. - Chakraborty, Rum 10. 11. 12. Read something about food that isn't a cookbook. 13. Find the book you have kept on your shelf unread for longest. Read it. 14. Read a book you remember from your childhood. - John Christopher's Tripods Trilogy 15. Read some poetry. 16. Read a play. 17. Read a short story collection. - Lone Ranger and Tonto... 18. Read something that's only available online. 19. 20a&b. Read two books with the same (or very similar) titles. 21. 22. Read something banned/censored/challenged. 23. A wild card, anyone?
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Jun 11, 2020 22:59
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Chamberk posted:I got a ton read this month; among the highlights were the Tripod Trilogy (which I read in elementary school and LOVED - a precursor to all those YA dystopias) Ditto - I've been meaning to re-read them for ages but I think they're in a box of books in my dad's garage on the other side of the country. There's also a prequel that he wrote much later in the '90s, about how the Tripods first come and take control of Earth, which I think is one of the earliest books I remember ever reading and which was great. Have you ever read any of Christopher's other stuff? He was quite prolific and wrote some post-apoc/dystopian novels aimed at adults. The Death of Grass ("No Blade of Grass" in the US, I think) was a particularly good one about a virus that wipes out crops and sparks mass famine. I also really enjoyed The Possessors, a Thing-like alien incursion story set in the Alps, and The World in Winter, about a new ice age. edit - and many of his books appear to be back in print! https://thesylepress.com/bookshop/ freebooter fucked around with this message at 06:20 on Jun 12, 2020 |
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Jun 12, 2020 06:16
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Hieronymous Alloy posted:Just putting up a reminder link for the Book Barn discord:
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Jun 25, 2020 15:56
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Invite has expired.
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Jun 27, 2020 14:29
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29. The Call of the Wild by Jack London. Tale of a sledge dog on the Arctic frontier. Not really my cup of tea, but London can certainly write, and I can see why he was so popular at the time. 30. Vernon God Little by D.B.C. Pierre. Soldiered on through this one because it's part of my finishing the Bookers challenge, but it really drove me up the wall. It's a sub-Palahniuk, sub-Hunter S. Thompson "comic" novel (it's never funny) about a kid who runs off after being falsely accused of a school shooting, written by the kind of insufferable Australian who thinks backpacking around Latin America and taking a bunch of drugs is sufficient to make you an interesting person. 31. Salem's Lot by Stephen King. I've been slowly working my way through King's earlier work, but this, his second novel, is the earliest one I've ever read. It's not a bad book by any means but is clearly the work of a younger man, who hadn't yet figured out how to make his digressions and his sprawling casts of characters actually engaging. It also required a little too much suspension of disbelief - as this cabal of vampires slowly takes over a town of 1,000 people, for an entire year, the rest of the state sort of shrugs and figures it's just a modern day ghost town. The country sheriff gets killed and nobody comes looking?[/spoiler] 32. The Siege of Krishnapur by J.G. Farrell. This is the second installment in Farrell's loose 'Empire' trilogy, satirical novels about the slow collapse of the British Empire. The first, Troubles, was one of my outstanding reads of last year, set in a crumbling Irish hotel across 1919-1921, the years of the Irish guerilla war for independence. The Siege of Krishnapur is set in 1857 during the sepoy mutiny and is loosely based on the Siege of Lucknow, with a few dozen white British and their loyalist Sikh soldiers holed up in a compound besieged by the sepoys. This one didn't quite land for me. Troubles worked so well as satire because the residents of the hotel are almost entirely insulated from the actual violence of the war; the rot is figuratively and literally inside the Gormenghast-esque hotel. The characters work as caricatures of the privileged British upper class precisely because they're so privileged. In the Siege of Krishnapur, on the other hand, they're undergoing the most horrific of torments - bloody battles, cholera, starvation, deprivation - and the stiff-upper-lip Victorian way they have of dealing with it is actually rather admirable. Yet at the same time there's a sort of jokey, comedy of manners, sometimes even slapstick vibe going on which just doesn't gel well with the actual events of the novel. It's not a bad book (I don't think Farrell could write a bad book) but it's a rather uneven one. 1. Set a goal for number of books or another personal challenge. 32/60 2. Of the books you read this year, make sure at least 20% of them are not written by men. 10/12 3. Of the books you read this year, make sure a least 20% of them are written by writers of colour. 3/12 (Chinua Achebe, Ted Chiang, Zora Neale Hurston) 4. Of the books you read this year, make sure at least 5% of them are written by LGBT writers. 2/3 (Alison Bechdel and Tillie Walden) 5. Read a book from each decade of the 20th Century (1900s, 1910s etc). 7/10 (Still need the '10s, '20s and '40s.)
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Jul 1, 2020 02:38
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The year of broken time is halfway over! Look on your shelves and think on the last six months, and prepare for the next!quote:1 & 2 - My Brother's Husband, books 1 & 2, by Gengoroh Tagame Somehow I read eleven books this month, though that includes a lot of comics. Good ones though! I can't wait for July to somehow feel even longer. 25 - Black And British: A Forgotten History, by David Olusoga. Dense but extremely readable history of black people and the conception of race in British history, from the late Roman occupation to the present day. Olusoga takes a holistic approach, demonstrating how a multiplicity of social, economic and religious factors have driven politics and attitudes toward race and ethnicity. From the "Age of Discovery" voyages to Africa, to the Victorian-era boom in abolitionist zeal and minstrel shows, at every point the reader is confronted with hideous truths and unpleasant hypocrisies. There is so much here that I only had the vaguest ideas about, and even more that I'd never encountered before, and I feel humbled and educated in equal measure. 26 - Stuck Rubber Baby, by Howard Cruse. A rich, emotional story about a young closeted gay man growing up in the segregated South during "Kennedytimes", exploring love, loss, faith, racism, homophobia, ambition, violence...it's one of those works that puts the "novel" into the term "graphic novel". The artwork is masterfully rendered, too, to where I could feel how much effort each panel must have taken - which makes me feel a little bad that the art style itself was always a little distracting to me. Still, this was a hell of a book, and worth its reputation and legacy. 27 - Mr. Boop, Vol. 1: "My Wife Is Betty Boop", by Alec Robbins. A stupid and wonderful comic strip about Alec being married to Betty Boop. Contains psychotherapy, group sex, and attempted murder. Masterful. 28, 29, 30 & 31 - Dorohedoro, Vol. 4, 5, 6 & 7, by Q. Hayashida. Antagonist backstory, secrets finally revealed, and an extensive baseball game. More interesting world-building, more grisly action, and the plot picks up momentum to a weird and satisfying climax of the first major arc. It's a good series! 32 - Lagoon, by Nnedi Okorafor. SF novel where shapeshifting alien life makes first contact in Nigeria's capital with a small group of strangers. It's a good, engaging story, moving along quickly even when the characters aren't, and Okorafor explores a range of Lagosian personalities from an evangelical preacher to a ragtag group of queer youths. The personality of the alien visitor is just inscrutable enough to keep things interesting, even as the plot becomes more linear in the third act, but there were enough beautiful/horrific scenes to keep the pages turning for me. Good stuff, and nice to see a first-contact story set somewhere new. 33 - Flood, by S. Alexander Reed & Elizabeth Sandifer. A 33⅓ book on the They Might Be Giants album of 1990, this explores the album and the band's history and legacy in depth. Branching off from a central idea of "flooding", Reed and Sandifer discuss the Johns' childhoods, their love of Americana, their politics, and their cultural capital as "nerd" icons. For a TMBG fan like myself this was a really fulfilling and entertaining read. 34 - Radicalized: Four Novellas, by Cory Doctorow. A collection of tomorrow-AD dystopian stories that are fun, engaging, and as subtle as a brick to the head. A woman jailbreaks her toaster and starts a small resistance movement among the poor population of her high-rise building; Superman decides to try and end racism; the US medical insurance industry's cruelty inspires a wave of terror attacks; and a rich prepper gets to live out his apocalypse fantasy. Doctorow's characters are easy to empathise with, and the stories have a ripped-from-the-headlines urgency that might hamper its appeal years into the future. but I enjoyed them a lot. 35 - Gut: The Inside Story of Our Body's Most Under-rated Organ, by Giulia Enders. Pop-science book about the digestive system that definitely seems like it skews toward a younger audience. Maybe it's the the twee prose style and sense of humour? Enders spends a lot of the book giving out health and medical advice, which was mildly interesting, but the most engaging parts were the discussions of gut flora and the "gut brain", and how digestion and cognition are even more closely linked than science previously thought. I wish there had been more of the latter; as a result I can only say I enjoyed about a third of the book. 1. Set a goal for number of books or another personal challenge. - 35/52 2. Of the books you read this year, make sure at least 1/3 of them are not written by men. - 19 - 4, 7, 8, 9, 10, 12, 14, 15, 19, 20, 21, 22, 23, 28, 29, 30, 31, 32, 35 3. Of the books you read this year, make sure a least 1/3 of them are written by writers of colour. - 15 - 1, 2, 6, 8, 14, 15, 19, 20, 21, 25, 28, 29, 30, 31, 32 4. Of the books you read this year, make sure at least 1/4 of them are written by LGBT writers. - 11 - 1, 2, 8, 13, 15, 16, 18, 22, 24, 26, 33 5. Read a book from each decade of the 20th Century (1900s, 1910s etc). 1900 - 5 (1907) 1910 - 22 (1914) 1920 - 4 (1920) 1930 - 17 (1939) 1940 - 1950 - 1960 - 7 (1967) 1970 - 1980 - 1990 - 26 (1995) 7. Ask someone in this thread for a wildcard, then read it. 8. Read something by an indigenous author. 13. Find the book you have kept on your shelf unread for longest. Read it. 14. Read a book you remember from your childhood. 16. Read a play. 20a&b. Read two books with the same (or very similar) titles. 23. Read a book from a country you've never visited. Gertrude Perkins fucked around with this message at 22:05 on Jul 22, 2020 |
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Jul 1, 2020 04:14
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June! 49. The Kingdom of Copper - SA Chakraborty 50. Foundation - Isaac Asimov 51. Nathan Coulter - Wendell Berry 52. A Breath of Snow and Ashes - Diana Gabaldon 53. The Siege of Krishnapur - J.G. Farrell 54. The Adventures and Misadventures of Maqroll - Alvaro Mutiz 55. The City We Became - N.K. Jemisin 56. The Rim of Morning - William Sloane 57. The Empress of Salt and Fortune - Nghi Vo Highlights of this month: The Siege of Krishnapur, a darkly comic story about Brits trapped during the Sepoy Rebellion; The Adventures and Misadventures of Maqroll, a collection of novellas about a wanderer who keeps getting into bad business deals; The Rim of Morning, a set of two novellas that are sci-fi horror but quite well-written. 1. Set a goal for number of books or another personal challenge. (57/50) Maybe I should up the overall number? 2. Of the books you read this year, make sure at least 20% of them are not written by men. 50% female (Chakraborty, Gabaldon, Jemisin, Vo ) 3. Of the books you read this year, make sure a least 20% of them are written by writers of colour. 25% POC (Jemisin, Vo) 4. Of the books you read this year, make sure at least 5% of them are written by LGBT writers. 5% 5. Read a book from each decade of the 20th Century (1900s, 1910s etc). (1930s, 1940s, 1950s, 1960s, 1970s, 1980s, 1990s covered) 1950s - Foundation 1970s - Siege of Krishnapur 6. Participate at least once in the TBB Book of the Month thread - read the book and post in the thread about that book! 7. Ask someone in this thread for a wildcard, then read it. 8. 9. Read an author's first book. - Nathan Coulter 10. 11. 12. Read something about food that isn't a cookbook. 13. Find the book you have kept on your shelf unread for longest. Read it. 14. 15. Read some poetry. 16. Read a play. 17. 18. Read something that's only available online. 19. 20a&b. Read two books with the same (or very similar) titles. 21. 22. Read something banned/censored/challenged. 23. Looking at my remaining categories, I ask for a wild card that is either from 1900-1929, about food, or only available online.
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Jul 1, 2020 21:01
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Chamberk posted:53. The Siege of Krishnapur - J.G. Farrell What a coincidence!
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Jul 1, 2020 23:40
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Oh cool, you're Siege of Krishnapals!Chamberk posted:Looking at my remaining categories, I ask for a wild card that is either from 1900-1929, about food, or only available online. How about some poetry? Dorothy Parker, Enough Rope, from 1926.
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Jul 2, 2020 00:30
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freebooter posted:What a coincidence! Whoa crazy! It's interesting that you liked Troubles more than Krishnapur while I was the other way around. Singapore Grip is an interesting one as well, but Krishnapur remains my favorite of the three. Meanwhile, I put a hold on Dorothy Parker's Complete Poems, which includes Enough Rope, so hey, that'll take care of a couple of spots for me.
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Jul 2, 2020 19:47
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So I took this month with an eye towards finishing up some challenges. I read a play, a BOTM, and a couple of things from other decades. Just 10s and 20s left on that challenge. I didn't get 12 done, but I did get 10. I got to some shorter ones from my list. The upside here is I'm crossing off a lot of stuff from my backlog as I can't really just browse a library. So I'm cautiously optimistic. It may take some strategery, but I think I can pull it off. I'm still OK on ratios (thanks to all women January and all Black February), but it was a big month for white dudes. Gotta keep that in mind going forward. 31. Squirrel Seeks Chipmunk by David Sedaris - I got this one for Christmas a few years back and finally got around to reading it. It's a collection of animal stories, or fables if you want, but of a modern sort reflecting racism, classism, and a wide variety of idiosyncrasies Aesop didn't address. It's pretty thoroughly OK. The best are pretty good. The worst are sorta blah. A highlight here is the fairly macabre drawings. Kudos to illustrator Ian Falconer. 32. The Ghost Sonata by August Strindberg - So I saw a bunch of well know plays were published in the 40s, and since my wife works in theater, I went through her bookshelf hoping to find one from that decade that I needed. And I turned up this instead. Published in 1907 this one one crosses off a particularly difficult era and according to my wife who put this on in college it's a "weird" play. It was also quoted in section headings in The Gone World which I just read. A young student runs into an old man who had (maybe) bankrupted his family. The old man offers to pay the student to attend society events and inform him of what happens. They both wind up at a dinner in a fancy house with a bunch of weirdos, some of whom are literally crazy and all of whom are not quite what they seem. Secrets are revealed, and masks metaphorically removed (apparently a fascination of Strindberg, according to the preface), and finished with the student and an ill young woman discussing life. Relevant quote from the end that also reflects the middle of the play " Well, at table he called for silence and raised his glass to make a speech… Then the safety-catch slipped and he spoke on and on, stripping the whole company bare, one after another, telling each and every one of them just how false they were. Then he sat down exhausted in the middle of the table, and told them all to go to hell!" This was OK. I don't know, this sort of thing (at the time experimental) isn't what I'm good with, and it probably would have been much better performed than read. 33. The African Queen by CS Forester - The Book of the Month! When an African mission is destroyed and the local population press ganged by the Germans, the missionary's sister sets off with a low class boat captain to sail down an impassable river, blow up a German boat, and strike a blow of England. Straight up adventure and love story, this was a good read to escape it all. 34. The Man With the Getaway Face by Richard Stark - The second Parker novel. I'd been wanting to read them, but my library lacks the first. This was OK. The first 2/3s is planning and committing a heist. Everything goes well without a hitch. The last third is an extended bit of Parker and a chauffeur trying to track down who killed a doctor. It was a weird coda. Like the last 4 pages was the best part of the book. Barring a strong recommendation, I'm not likely to revisit the series. 35. Darkness at Noon by Arthur Koestler - Published in 1940, this is about the Great Purge. Our narrator is arrested and caught up in the show trials, destined to be killed for political reasons. He reflects on how he became disillusioned with the party and what the revolution had become. I enjoyed this, it was really interesting. It reminded me a bit of Winston's interrogation in 1984 (just a whole book of it), and apparently Orwell took inspiration from this and Darkness at Noon lead him to believe fiction was better medium for talking about the dangers of authoritarianism. Apparently there's a more updated translation from a few years ago. Had I known that I'd have gotten that. 36. Cat's Cradle by Kurt Vonnegut - 1960s here we come! It's Vonnegut, it's good. 37. A Rage in Harlem by Chester Himes - Jackson gets scammed out of some money, steals from his boss to bribe a crooked cop, and consults his brother to try and hunt down the scammers, save his girl, and steal the trunk full of gold ore they have. As you may imagine this all turns into a big mess. Originally published in the 50s if you need something from then. 38. The Deaths of Henry King by Jesse Ball - Henry King dies a lot. Each chapter is a brief vignette in which he dies in a new fashion. Most are accompanied by an illustration reminiscent of a grave rubbing. A quick read and often humorous. It could be better though, it doesn't feel really insightful or that it has much to say other than King repetitively dying. 39. Freshwater by Akwaeke Emezi - Somehow I thought this was an entirely different book. It's not, it's Emezi's debut novel from a few years ago about a young woman coming of age, particularly coming to terms with her identity and sexuality. Of course, the interesting bit is it's told primarily from the standpoint of the ogbanje inhabiting her. Ogbaje of course being Igbo spirits said to inhabit rebellious children. It's really good and interesting. 40. Meddling Kids by Edward Cantero - A gang of teen detectives (a la Scooby Doo) gets back together in their mid-20s because they're still haunted by their last case. Probably because it wasn't just a man in a mask but there was a Lovecraftian horror involved. I find this premise to be good. The book doesn't quite live up to it. It's fun, but Cantero gets in the way of the story some. Could definitely be better, but also worse. Pretty OK, and a quick read. quote:1. Famous Men Who Never Lived by K Chess
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Jul 2, 2020 22:52
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