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Kopijeger posted:Vanished Kingdoms: The History of Half-Forgotten Europe by Norman Davies: Essentially a series of essays on polities that do not exist anymore, the various chapters are uneven in quality. On the whole quite interesting, but probably only for those who already are interested in the subject matter. I enjoyed this, but agree that it was uneven. There were a couple of chapters (the Byzantine one stands out in particular) which felt like he wrote the outline for them then decided to publish that instead of writing an actual chapter. The rest is quality though.
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Dec 31, 2016 19:03
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Should probably also finish off the year. December - 8: 81. A Grain of Wheat (Ngugi wa Thiong'o) 82. The Space Merchants (Frederik Pohl & CM Kornbluth) 83. Ninja Attack! (Hiroko Yoda & Matt Alt) 84. Hitman Anders and the Meaning of it All (Jonas Jonasson) 85. Fatherland (Robert Harris) 86. The City & The City (China Mieville) Not a big haul this month, busy with exams and Christmas, but I liked what I read. A Grain of Wheat was the best book of the month by far, a reflection on the events of the Mau Mau Uprising in the days leading up to Uhuru, independence day. The Space Merchants was some fun sci-fi. The concept isn't exactly mindblowing these days (capitalism out of control!) but it's pacy and focused. Hitman Anders was fine I guess but it felt like it finished at about page 270 and then wound on for another hundred pages for no clear reason. I've not heard good things about the book before this either, so it seems like Jonasson might have written one fun book with Hundred Year Old Man and then run out of steam. Fatherland was a decent, uncomplicated thriller. It turns out Nazis are bad people, who knew! Finally The City & The City was a gift from my wife, which thinking about it so was the last Mieville I read (Perdido Street Station). The conceit is pretty outlandish, with two cities which share the same physical space but exist legally as foreign countries to each other, and where citizens are required to forcibly ignore the "foreign" parts for fear of being found "in breach" and spirited away. It's a kind of weird-fantasy police procedural, and Mieville clearly had fun with the concept. He manages to keep it rolling nicely, and as long as you're able to suspend disbelief enough to go along with you'll have a good time. That ends me at 86, and about 1/2 of a long history book on the Ottoman Empire. That's way past my goal of 50, which I thought was comfortable if not exactly stretching, so next year I'm gunning for 90. I didn't quite complete the booklord - my wildcard seemed cool but I never seemed to be able to find it in stock anywhere, and the paperback was only released here in the middle of November, so no luck. Oh well. Year to Date - 86: Booklord: 1-13, 15-22 01. Death and the Penguin (Andrey Kurkov) 6 02. Kitchen (Banana Yoshimoto) 2 03. Sky Burial (Xinran) 3 04. The Shining (Stephen King) 16 05. Come As You Are: The Story of Nirvana (Michael Azerrad) 18 06. A Case of Exploding Mangoes (Mohammed Hanif) 12 07. A Visit from the Goon Squad (Jennifer Egan) 11 08. King of the World (David Remnick) 09. Norwegian Wood (Haruki Murakami) 10. Ubik (Philip K. Dick) 8 11. The Vegetarian (Han Kang) 15 12. Waiting for the Barbarians (J.M. Coetzee) 13. John Crow's Devil (Marlon James) 14. Anna Karenina (Leo Tolstoy) 4 15. The Dream Life of Sukhanov (Olga Grushin) 16. Farewell, Cowboy (Olja Savicevic) 17. A History of Sparta 950-192BC (W.G. Forrest) 5 18. The Kite Runner (Khaled Hosseini) 19. The Guest Cat (Takashi Hiraida) 20. The Book of Memory (Petina Gappah) 21. The Old Man and the Sea (Ernest Hemingway) 19 22. Fury (Salman Rushdie) 23. Ninja (John Man) 24. Concrete Island (JG Ballard) 25. A God in Ruins (Kate Atkinson) 10 26. Dead Souls (Nikolai Gogol) 27. Perdido Street Station (China Mieville) 17 28. A Little Life (Hanya Yanagihara) 29. Pride and Prejudice (Jane Austen) 30. The Mark and the Void (Paul Murray) 31. The Iliad (Homer) 32. Girls of Riyadh (Rajaa Alsanea) 20 33. The Temple of the Golden Pavilion (Yukio Mishima) 34. Steampunk! (Kelly Link & Gavin J. Grant) 13 35. A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man (James Joyce) 36. The Chimes (Anna Smaill) 9 37. The Art of Joy (Goliarda Sapienza) 38. Fever Pitch (Nick Hornby) 39. Fateless (Imre Kertesz) 40. Britannia: A History of Roman Britain (Sheppard Frere) 41. Colourless Tsukuru Tazaki and His Years of Pilgrimage (Haruki Murakami) 22 42. Candide, or Optimism (Voltaire) 43. Dubliners (James Joyce) 21 44. The Fall of the Stone City (Ismail Kadare) 45. Hitler and Stalin: Parallel Lives (Alan Bullock) 46. The Sympathizer (Viet Thanh Nguyen) 47. Guards! Guards! (Terry Pratchett) 48. The Gum Thief (Douglas Coupland) 49. Eric (Terry Pratchett) 50. Beauty is a Wound (Eka Kurniawan) 51. A Wild Sheep Chase (Haruki Murakami) 52. One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich (Aleskandr Solzhenitsyn) 53. Vanished Kingdoms: The History of Half-Forgotten Europe (Norman Davies) 7 54. Being Wrong: Adventures in the Margin of Error (Kathryn Schulz) 55. Sword Song (Bernard Cornwell) 56. Inez (Carlos Fuentes) 57. Two Years, Eight Months, and Twenty Eight Nights (Salman Rushdie) 58. The Burning Land (Bernard Cornwell) 59. Death of Kings (Bernard Cornwell) 60. Life After Life (Kate Atkinson) 61. Blindness (Jose Saramago) 62. A General Theory of Oblivion (José Eduardo Agualusa) 63. From the Mouth of the Whale (Sjón) 64. The Rabbit Back Literature Society (Pasi Ilmari Jaaskelainen) 65. VALIS (Philip K. Dick) 66. High-Rise (JG Ballard) 67. The Heart Goes Last (Margaret Atwood) 68. The Hungry Ghosts (Shyam Selvadurai) 69. The Dream of the Celt (Mario Vargas Llosa) 70. Ficciones (Jorge Luis Borges) 71. Wind Pinball (Haruki Murakami) 72. The Three Emperors (Miranda Carter) 73. How the Soldier Repairs the Gramophone (Sasa Stanisic) 74. Hokkaido Highway Blues (Will Ferguson) 75. Love in Small Letters (Francesc Miralles) 76. The Penelopiad (Margaret Atwood) 77. Aneurin Bevan: A Biography - Volume 1: 1897-1945 (Michael Foot) 78. Crash (JG Ballard) 79. The Atrocity Exhibition (JG Ballard) 80. The Watchmaker of Filigree Street (Natasha Pulley) 81. A Grain of Wheat (Ngugi wa Thiong'o) 82. The Space Merchants (Frederik Pohl & CM Kornbluth) 83. Ninja Attack! (Hiroko Yoda & Matt Alt) 84. Hitman Anders and the Meaning of it All (Jonas Jonasson) 85. Fatherland (Robert Harris) 86. The City & The City (China Mieville)
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Dec 31, 2016 19:12
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December 64. Goldenhand- Garth Nix. The 5th Abhorsen book. Better than Clariel, not as good as the first three. 65. Nazi Germany and Jews: The Years of Extermination- Saul Friedlander 66. Operatives, Spies, and Saboteurs: The Unknown Story of the Men and Women of World War II's OSS- Patrick O'Donnell I finished my target number for the year but failed the booklord challenge because I fell into a non-fiction hole from which I could not escape. Oh well. 1) Vanilla Number 67/52 (my goodreads is still off by one?  )2) Something written by a woman Hidden Figures, A Conspiracy of Decency, The Song of Achilles, Lagoon, Patternmaster, Mind of My Mind, Sunshine, Notorious RBG, Wild Seed, Clay's Ark, The Rape of Europa 3) Something Written by a nonwhite author the 4 Patternmaster books, Lagoon, Hidden Figures 4) Something written in the 1800s Fathers and Sons 5) Something History Related (fictional or non-fiction your choice) this is like half my list I'm not even gonna bother listing them 6) A book about or narrated by an animal FAILED 7) A collection of essays. FAILED 8) A work of Science Fiction Star Wars: Before the Awakening, I Have No Mouth and I Must Scream 9) Something written by a musician Wolf in White Van 10) Read a long book, something over 500 pages Nazi Germany and the Jews, Robert Oppenheimer, Between Silk and Cyanide, Alan Turing: The Enigma, Elantris 11) Read something about or set in NYC The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier and Clay 12) Read Airplane fiction (Patterson, ect) Impact 13) Read Something YA Goldenhand 14) Wildcard! FAILED- I didn't get one  15) Something recently published (up to a year. The year will be the day you start this challenge) Stiletto, City of Blades 16) That one book you’ve wanted to read for a while now. Lagoon 17) The First book in a series Wild Seed, The Rook, FotR, City of Stairs, Blood Oath, Promise of Blood 18) A biography or autobiography Robert Oppenheimer, Alan Turing 19) Read something from the lost generation (Fitzgerald, Hemmingway, ect.) or from the Beat Genneration The Sun Also Rises 20) Read a banned book The Sun Also Rises (apparently) 21) A Short Story collection I Have No Mouth and I Must Scream 22) It’s a Mystery. FAILED but I hate mysteries so whatever Happy new year, book goons. 
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Dec 31, 2016 21:16
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thespaceinvader posted:List... It's been a few months. Suffice it to say I did manage to read one more book in that time. Indeed, several. Mostly fairly meh stuff from various ebook bundles which were entertaining enough but nothing particularly special. I probably got up to around 70 but a lot of those were very short.
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Jan 1, 2017 11:20
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Final 2016 tally: 1. Exoskeleton by Shane Stadler 2. The Hobbit by JRR Tolkien 3. The Serpent by Claire North 4. Dear Mr Kershaw: A Pensioner Writes by Derek Philpott 5. Bossypants by Tina Fey 6. House of Leaves by Mark Z. Danielewski 7. The Books of Magic by Neil Gaiman 8. The Raven Boys (Raven Cycle #1) by Maggie Steifvater 9. The Dream Thieves (Raven Cycle #2) by Maggie Steifvater 10. Blue Lily, Lily Blue (Raven Cycle #3) by Maggie Steifvater 11. Modern Romance by Aziz Anzari 12. Legend by Marie Lu 13. Sabriel by Garth Nix 14. Three men on a boat by Jerome K Jerome 15. Thus Spake Zarathustra by Friedrich Nietzsche 16. Station Eleven by Emily St. John Mandel 17. Touched by an Angel by Jonathan Morris 18. River of Ink by Paul M M Cooper 19. Is Everyone Hanging Out Without Me? by Mindy Kaling 20. Mr Mercedes by Steven King 21. I Remember You by Yrsa Sigurðardóttir 22. Unwanted by Kristina Ohlsson 23. Close Encounters of the Furred Kind by Tom Cox 24. I Am a Cat by Natsume Soseki 25. The Girl You Lost by Kathryn Croft 26. Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone by JK Rowling 27. Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets by JK Rowling 28. The Infinite Wait and Other Stories by Julia Wertz 29. Let the Great World Spin by Colum McCann 30. Spectacles by Sue Perkins 31. I Have No Mouth and I Must Scream by Harlan Ellison 32. Career of Evil by Robert Galbreith 33. The Great Zoo of China by Matthew Reilly 34. The Fuller Memorandum by Charles Stross 35. Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban by JK Rowling 36. The Essex Serpent by Sarah Perry 37. The Apocolypse Files by Charles Stross 38. The World Walker by Ian W. Sainsbury 39/40. Rat Queens Vol 2 & 3 by Kurtis J Weibe 41: Esio Trot by Roald Dahl 42: Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire 43. Sapiens: A Brief History of Mankind by Yuval Noah Harari 44. Moranifesto by Caitlin Moran 45, 46 & 47: Harry Potter and the OotP/HBP/DH by JK Rowling. 48. Ready Player One by Ernest Cline 49. All the Light We Cannot See by Anthony Doerr 50. Kingpin by Kevin Poulsen 51. The Passage by Justin Cronin I only managed to read one book in December, knocking off one challenge off the list 52. The Bone Clocks by David Mitchell: I liked this one although it seems to polarise opinion. It did take a bit of concentration and getting used to the story meandering about, but I liked the way that it told the story of the main character through a series of different people's lives and perspectives. I'm not sure it's meant as a warning about the future of humanity but given how 2016 has turned out, it certainly felt like it. Anyway, smashed my vanilla book number but didn't manage to get through all of the challenges, must try harder Booklord Challenge Progress 9) Something written by a musician 14) Wildcard! 19) Read something from the lost generation (Fitzgerald, Hemmingway, ect.) or from the Beat Generation
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Jan 1, 2017 13:32
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I didn't even bother posting in November, since the month was so bad for reading. But then this last month I really picked up, and I actually completed the Booklord challenge! I'm really glad I hit my goal for reading things by women, but only seven books by PoC in a year is pretty pathetic. quote:1 - Daft Wee Stories, by Limmy (Brian Limond) I read eight books in November/December! 58 - The Seventh Miss Hatfield, by Anna Caltabiano. A really disappointing book. A "time-travel romance" where the time travel involves an 11-year-old girl being essentially kidnapped and aged-up against her will or consent, suddenly becoming a gorgeous twenty-something, despite still being eleven. Transported back from the 50s to New York of the early 1900s, she falls in love with the son of a wealthy industrialist - a generic handsome guy with daddy issues. Yes, they kiss. Caltabiano barely goes five pages without reminding the author that the protagonist used to be a specific preteen girl but is now an overwhelmingly beautiful and kind and gifted and intelligent young woman. Gross implications of age-gap romance aside, a line from Garth Marenghi's Darkplace kept running through my head as I read this: "I know writers who use subtext, and they're all cowards." Everything is explained and explained again, from basic literary tropes to metaphors to each minute pang of emotion the narrator herself experiences. At no point is the author's hand-holding deathgrip relaxed, except for brief moments in the third act, when mercifully things actually happen. Not surprising or interesting things, mind, but at least a change from the drudgery of the romantic costume drama that comprises the vast majority of the book. If it seems like I'm being too harsh, I probably am, and mostly because the premise - a timeline of women forced to inhabit the same immortal role - could be really interesting. But Caltabiano misses every opportunity to be interesting. 59 - We Who Are About To..., by Joanna Russ. A short and powerful novel (novella?) that interrogates the standard "stranded space colonists" narrative. The protagonist rejects the pressures and impositions of establishing society, and her first-person perspective is furious and cathartic and sad. Very good. 60 - Embassytown, by China Miéville. Gorgeous, engrossing high-concept SF themed around language, communication, and methods of control. I was engrossed from the start, the ideas drew me in utterly, and by the last few chapters I was powering through eagerly. Strange and wonderful, I absolutely loved it. 61 - The Scarlet Letter, by Nathaniel Hawthorne. A classic story of scandal, isolation and Puritan morality. Remarkably chaste for a book repeatedly banned for "sexual immorality", but I can tell that Hawthorne has a real iconoclastic streak in the way he depicts colonial society and life. Unlike a few contemporary writers, the prose really holds up, and it's an engrossing and very readable book! I'm glad I finally got round to this. 62 - The War of Desire and Technology at the Close of the Mechanical Age, by Allucquère Rosanne Stone. I love reading early-mid 90s books on cyberculture, and this is a particularly enjoyable one. Read because it's adjacent to my own research field, but added to my proper "books I read this year" list because I was engrossed throughout. Stone presents some typically radical cyberculture exploration, with enthusiasm and a good sense of quirky countercultural humour. Topics range from multiple personalities to "crossdressing" in virtual spaces; from an oral history of Atari to the embodied technology of phone sex. At times her proclamations get a little strange, and as with anything written about Internet culture in the 90s, parts of it are hugely outdated. But Stone's personality is infectious, and it's always pleasant to read a non-fiction book with such optimism at its core. 63 - City of Stairs, by Robert Jackson Bennett. My Booklord Wild Card, and a really nice surprise. Industialised-world fantasy, a great setting that seems a mix of Russia, Turkey and Iran, some good plot hooks and really fun characters. It's a solid novel of intrigue and excitement, political discussion that doesn't quite beat you over the head with its allegories, and a good and interesting exploration of magic and the divine. The ending felt a little rushed as everything came to a head, but I was thoroughly entertained! 64 - A Different Beat: Writings by Women of the Beat Generation, edited by Richard Peabody. I wanted to explore outside of the core "canon" of Beat writers, so I picked up this collection with barely any names I recognised. It's a good and varied selection of poetry, prose, fiction and autobiography from women involved in and on the periphery of the Beats. There are a number of recurring figures and themes - Kerouac and Ginsberg are regular characters, for instance, and seeing them described by others helps to humanise (and problematise) their personal mythology. (Kerouac in particular comes off as a staggering arsehole, which is pretty satisfying to read). It's a mixed bag - some pieces don't work nearly as well as others - but the highs are very high indeed. I'm also grateful to this collection for highlighting some really impressive and moving work by women I had no idea existed - particular favourites were Kay Johnson, Hettie Jones, Lenore Kandel, Barbara Moraff and Margaret Randall. Strongly recommend to anyone looking for new and interesting voices from 50s-60s counterculture. 65 - Shadow of the Colossus, by Nick Suttner. A solid companion to a really excellent game, Suttner walks the reader through challenge by challenge, using each of the game's colossus encounters as a touchstone around which to explore another aspect of its development and impact. A quick read, as all the Boss Fight Books are, but a satisfying one. Fuller reviews up on my GoodReads, as always. FINAL BOOKLORD RESULTS PAGE TOTAL: 15,540 pages approx. Which means 42.5 pages/day.
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Jan 1, 2017 17:02
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December 60. NOS4A2. Joe Hill. This is a fun book, even with the horror tag. The story is great with some weak protagonist, weak bad guy and some weird subplots that go nowhere. Still, the book is good. 61. in Cold Blood. Truman Capote. Extremely detailed and captivating. Truman Capote really knew how to write and investigate. 62. Ragnarok. A.S. Byatt. A tale of reading another tale. I found the myth parts more compelling anyway. 63. David Bowie: The Last Interview. David Bowie. A little view into the life of a great artist. Bowie was a showman since he was young. 64. The Shadow Rising. Robert Jordan. Quite long, if it wasn't that epic and if I didn't like the characters the book would be almost boring. 65. The Girl On The Train. Paula Hawkins. Boring and depressing. Every character is bad but not in a good way, just bad. The story is decent, just that. 66. Farmer in the Sky. Robert A. Heinlein. A mediocre juvenile book about space exploration and colonization. Just that and nothing else. Booklord challenge Complete!
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Jan 1, 2017 22:42
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Total: 44/52 Female authors: 14/24 Non-Fiction: 5/12 Arabian Nights: 3/10 See my Goodreads for full reviews. As you can see, I fell well short of all my goals this year. The Arabian Nights one was perhaps a bit ambitious, but the others should have been quite achievable if I hadn't just gone off reading a few times. I made a decent attempt at catching up in December, but I was just too far behind to manage it. Moonbane was a really dumb book, and the only good thing about reading it was the crazy defence of it someone wrote in response to my review, containing such wonderful phrases as "space is where the moon is at" and "the all too plausible fact that this is FICTION" The Colors of Space was just some pretty generic, old-fashioned sci-fi. I can't even remember why I had it, I just picked it essentially at random from the books I had on my Kindle. Principles of Screenwriting was terrible. In so many ways. The author comes across as a pompous, arrogant, narcissist who knows practically nothing and is even worse at communicating it. But he's apparently very highly regarded as a teacher of screenwriting? And this supposed expert on film doesn't seem to know of many films (he continually goes back to Kramer vs. Kramer, Chinatown and Casablanca as his examples for everything) and doesn't seem to have bothered actually watching the films he quotes - the most egregious example being that famous line from Star Wars "Go with the Force, go with the Force". He also just says all sorts of weird stuff about a whole range of topics - cars; sex; comics; music; etc. - and it's like he's an alien trying to pass as human who just gets everything slightly wrong. For example: "You escape into your car, snap on the radio, and get in the proper lane according to the music. If classical, you hug the right; if pop, down the middle of the road; if rock, head left." "Murder Mysteries are like board games, cool entertainments for the mind." "The understanding of how we create the audience's emotional experience begins with the realization that there are only two emotions-pleasure and pain." Those aren't even emotions, let alone the only two! I only read the book because it was assigned for a class, though I cannot understand why. Wrap It In A Bit Of Cheese was exactly what you'd expect if you've read Thorne's previous books. Not his best, but still very funny. I read Blood Red Turns Dollar Green because it was recommended on a podcast I listen to, but unfortunately it didn't do much for me. I didn't like any of the characters and I found the plot a bit hard to follow. The Diary of a Nobody, Three Men in a Boat and The Affair of the Blood-Stained Egg Cosy were all recommended to me by goons as funny books, and one of them lived up to that promise. Three Men in a Boat meanders a bit but when it's on target it's funny. I didn't understand the point of The Diary of a Nobody at all. I didn't hate it, but I didn't really get anything out of it. I did enjoy The Affair of the Blood-Stained Egg Cosy, but I didn't find it particularly amusing. Apparently it's supposed to be a parody of the cozy genre, but it didn't really seem to exaggerate anything or play anything up in a comic way, it was just a pretty by-the-numbers cozy mystery. It's a little overcomplicated, which makes the solution a bit unsatisfying, but it's an easy, enjoyable read even if it's not actually funny. I didn't read a lot that I really enjoyed in 2016, but I guess my top five would be
Hopefully I'll read more and better books this year.
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Jan 2, 2017 03:20
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November-December Finished the booklord and my book goal, feel pretty good about what I read this year. Definitely a step up from not really reading much the past few years. Mother Night Kurt Vonnegut - I had never read a Kurt Vonnegut book before and I really enjoyed this one. Joyland Stephen King - My favorite King book I've read so far. Really emotionally rang with me because of the main character looking back through his life and post high-school experiences. Seinfeldia Jennifer Armstrong - I expected to like this book a lot more than I did. The writer's ideas sometimes distracted from the more interesting accounts of the show. Kitchen of the Great Midwest Ryan Stradal - A fun novel about a woman's culinary journey from birth to her adulthood. Nothing special but entertaining. A Confederacy of Dunces John Kennedy Toole - I greatly enjoyed this book, very funny, very well written. The Consolation of Philosophy Boethius - I was inspired to read this by the preceding book, very thought-provoking look at why life is unfair written by a man about to be executed. King's Ransom Ed Mcbain - An entertaining detective story, eh. 1984 George Orwell - One of the most famous dystopian novels. Frightening and sad. The Jungle Upton Sinclair - A brutal novel about the experience of the poor in Chicago's meat packing industry. Aurora Kim Robinson - An entertaining novel about the realities of interstellar colonization. Booklord Challenge 1) 60/60 2) Something written by a woman - Go Set A Watchman 3) Something Written by a nonwhite author - Spelunky 4) Something written in the 1800s - The Brothers Karamazov 5) Something History Related (fictional or non-fiction your choice) - Samurai! 6) A book about or narrated by an animal - The Art of Racing in the Rain 7) A collection of essays. - Look Evelyn, Duck Dynasty Wiper Blades. We Should Get Them.: A Collection of New Essays 8) A work of Science Fiction - Robot Dreams 9) Something written by a musician - Kanye West Owes Me $300... 10) Read a long book, something over 500 pages - The Brothers Karamazov 11) Read something about or set in NYC - Tom Clancy's The Division: New York Collapse 12) Read Airplane fiction (Patterson, ect) - Angels and Demons 13) Read Something YA - Harry Potter and the Cursed Child 14) Wildcard! - Angels in America: A Gay Fantasia on National Themes - Tony Kushner 15) Something recently published (up to a year. The year will be the day you start this challenge) - Empires of Eve: A History of the Great Empires of Eve Online 16) That one book you’ve wanted to read for a while now. - Ender's Shadow 17) The First book in a series - Wool 18) A biography or autobiography - Bossypants 19) Read something from the lost generation (Fitzgerald, Hemmingway, ect.) or from the Beat Generation - The 42nd Parallel 20) Read a banned book - Catch 22 21) A Short Story collection - About Time: 12 Short Stories 22) It’s a Mystery. - Murder on the Orient Express
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Jan 2, 2017 03:57
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Haven't posted since August, but I did manage to get at least one of everything on the BookLord challenge list, plus 44/40. Only 4 of those 44 were by female authors, so I'll have to try a little harder there next year I guess. August 31) Leonardo's Legacy, Stefan Klein (BLC# 18, Bio) 32) Bourne Identity, Robert Ludlum (BLC# 12, Airplane) I enjoyed this much more than I expected. Probably won't pick up the rest of the series though. 33) Lolita, Vladimir Nabokov (BLC# 20, Banned) 34) In The Garden of Beasts, Erik Larson Sept-Dec 35) Blood Meridian, Cormac McCarthy 36) Mistborn: The Final Empire, Brandon Sanderson 37) Mistborn: The Well of Ascension, Brandon Sanderson 38) Mistborn: The Hero of Ages, Brandon Sanderson I don't remember much about these. I think I enjoyed Blood Meridian quite a bit, and can't complain about the Mistborn books. 39) There Are No Electrons: Electronics For Earthlings, Kenn Amdahl 40) Beautiful Evidence, Edward Tufte Get The Visual Display of Quantitative Information instead. 41) Coyote America, Dan Flores (BLC# 15, Recent) Started out strong, some fun Old Man Coyote stories, and a lot of interesting information about coyote population history and control, ecology, and urbanization. The last half mostly trailed away into tired old-hippie-ranting-about-ranchers/biologists/Republicans/sheep, etc, etc. 42) On Killing, Lt. Col. Dave Grossman Very interesting, well written, and engaging book that I'd recommend to anyone. Some TV violence rambling in the forward in the edition I read, but the book itself had a ton of seemingly well supported observations on military conditioning, how warfare has changed, and the effect that has had on soldiers. 43) Shattered Sword, Jonathan Parshall and Anthony Tully Military history of the Battle of Midway, focusing mostly on the plans and movements of the Japanese fleet. Apparently uses some Japanese sources that correct some common western perceptions about why things went so badly south for the Imperial Japanese Navy. Nowhere near as dry as I expected after flipping through it. 44) My Commando Operations, Otto Skorzeny Autobiography by a Austrian officer in the Waffen-SS who led some of the crazier German operations such as the glider raid that rescued Mussolini. Some of it is an interesting war journal, a lot of it is how the German people were betrayed by various generals and intelligence agencies, and there's a fun dash of "Hitler really just wanted peace in Europe." Some of it is just plain wrong also, he talks about Germany fielding a thermobaric weapon during Operation Barbarossa, which I don't think can possibly be true. Still enjoyed reading it though, I'd recommend it if you really want some Nazi perspective. Edit to add: Thank you for running this, I really enjoyed expanding my reading horizons a little through meeting the demands of the BookLord. McClanahan fucked around with this message at 10:44 on Jan 2, 2017 |
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Jan 2, 2017 10:28
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This is the final booklist post for the year for me, but later today I'll do another post with the booklord challenge tally and highlights/lowlights. 108. Ignition! An Informal History of Liquid Rocket Propellants by John D. Clark A perennial favourite, now that an (unofficial) e-reader friendly version is available, I had to reread it. I'd probably get more out of this if I had more than basic high-school chemistry knowledge, but even not understanding most of the chemical names, it's a great read with a lot of entertaining (and alarming) stories. 109. Wild Swans: Three Daughters of China by Jung Chang An autobiography and family history of three generations of Chang's family, starting with her grandmother's life as concubine to a dying warlord in the 1920s and ending after her escape to the UK on a study permit. It's a fascinating and often horrifying look at life "on the ground" in China during WW2 and under Mao, something that I learned basically nothing at all about in school. 110. Rosemary and Rue by Seanan McGuire 111. A Local Habitation by Seanan McGuire 112. An Artificial Night by Seanan McGuire 113. Late Eclipses by Seanan McGuire 114. One Salt Sea by Seanan McGuire 115. Ashes of Honor by Seanan McGuire 116. Chimes at Midnight by Seanan McGuire 117. The Winter Long by Seanan McGuire 118. A Red Rose Chain by Seanan McGuire The October Daye series. This is the series that McGuire started first, and the first few books are noticeably rough around the edges compared to her later work (and the first book especially suffers from the "Parasitology problem", where the protagonist spends so much time being knocked out and carted around that it stops being dramatic and starts being funny). There's a definite upward trend throughout the series, though -- in the quality of the writing, the power level of the characters, and what's at stake. I'd rank it below InCryptid, but above Indexing and Sparrow Hill Road. There's one more book after this, but Red Rose Chain wraps some major plot arcs and I'm told that Once Broken Faith kicks off some new ones, so I think I'll wait until she's written some more of these before I continue reading. 119. Red Notice: A True Story of High Finance, Murder, and One Man's Fight for Justice by Bill Browder This really does read like a political thriller rather than like stuff that actually happened, although if it were fiction it would probably have a more satisfying conclusion. Highly recommended if you are thinking of starting a business in Russia and need reasons not to. 120. Disintegration by Bard Bloom Finally wrapping up the Mating Flight series (so far) with book #3. (Yes, this means I read them out of order, but #3 and #4 have nothing to do with each other, so it hardly matters.) I agree with Bard that this is weaker than Mating Flight itself, but I still enjoyed it a lot (and sent them a pile of bug reports -- Disintegration hasn't yet seen the years of polish that Mating Flight got before publication). This also refreshes the contrast with Jo Walton's Tooth and Claw; Walton may write more tightly planned plots, but Bard writes better (read: weirder and less human) dragons. It does end very abruptly (something I also noted in $NAMELESS_FOURTH_BOOK); I may have to reread the first two books in 2017 to see if this is characteristic of all the Mating Flight books (or perhaps all of Bard's work in general).
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Jan 2, 2017 16:43
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Booklord Challenge
I ended up punting on the Lost Generation/Beat Generation challenge; I left it to fairly late in the year and November/December were such an exhausting clusterfuck that I just wanted comfort reading at that point. Managed all the others with only one duplicate, though! And my reread count has gone waaaay down since I started keeping track. Highlights/Lowlights Last year I did a top/bottom 7, and I think I want to make that a regular event, so here goes. These aren't necessary the "objectively" best/worst books of the year (whatever that means); the top 7 are going to be the books I enjoyed the most, whether I could in good conscience recommend them to other people or not, and the bottom 7 is probably going to include some books that, while not necessarily bad, fell well short of the expectations I had for them. (But also some genuinely bad books.) Top 7:
Bottom 7:
Stats A few people did this last year, so this year I annotated the books as I read them. pre:$ booklog stats --tags=author:\* --by-count
Books: 120 Authors: 54
# of books by tag:
author:m 61 ( 50.83%)
author:f 59 ( 49.17%)
author:na 3 ( 2.50%)
author:x 2 ( 1.67%)
# of authors by tag:
author:m 32 (59.26%)
author:f 20 (37.04%)
author:na 3 (5.56%)
author:x 1 (1.85%)
pre:$ booklog stats --tags=genre:\* --by-count
# of books by tag:
genre:fantasy 53 ( 44.17%)
genre:sf 40 ( 33.33%)
genre:nonfiction 12 ( 10.00%)
genre:superheroes 8 ( 6.67%)
genre:mystery 3 ( 2.50%)
genre:hist-fiction 1 ( 0.83%)
genre:thriller 1 ( 0.83%)
genre:comedy 1 ( 0.83%)
genre:horror 1 ( 0.83%)
genre:mythos 1 ( 0.83%)
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Jan 2, 2017 18:02
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Ben Nevis posted:1. My Dead Body by Charlie Huston. Somehow to cap the year off, I only read 3 books. Native Son took longer than supposed, and I got pretty bogged down reading the Biographers Tale, which I came up about 40 pages short of finishing. I also went back and re-read some Nero Wolfe, but that doesn't really count. Polishing off Native Son did complete the Booklord Challenge for me, so wahoo. 82. Notes of a Native Son by James Baldwin - Man, I sorta wish we'd come farther in 60 years. Some of the media reviews didn't hit home since I'm not that familiar with the media, but the larger points about the reprenstation of black people in media are still relevant. 83. Misenchanted Sword by Lawrence Watt-Evans - I'd seen a rec for this kicked around in the SFF thread, though I can't remember specifically what it was recommended for. That being said it's a different sort of swords and sorcery book that's quite a departure from the norm. 84. The Burning Light by Bradley P. Beaulieu and Robert Ziegler - Grabbed this on a whim from the library and it was an interesting book. The Light, an addictive psychic phenomenon, is a pervasive problem in the flooded ruins of New York. The book tracks a task force hunting down "vectors" of The Light as well a junkie Light addict. On the whole this was an interesting fast paced book that bobbled the ending a bit. Would still recommend, but I think it could have wound up better. Just to cap off the year, 21 books I read were women, so right at 25%. I hope to improve that some next year. 16 were non-white, and I'm going to make a concerted effort to increase that. Over 40% of the books I read were published in the last year. I attribute that to frequent library visits. I read some less sci-fi than I expected I would. On the whole, I think I read a lot less genre fiction this year, and read a handful of award winning and nominated works that I might not have otherwise. Looking back, I'm probably picking General Theory of Obvlivion as my best book of the year, honorable mention probably goes to In the Time of the Butterflies. It's interesting, perhaps, that both are about revolutions. Biggest surprises of the year were probably A Day No Pigs Would Die and Crazy From the Heat. I didn't know what to expect from either and wound up really enjoying both of them, though for different reasons. On the whole, it was a good year in books. 1) Vanilla Number 84/45 2) Something written by a woman - 5, 7, 18, 17, 16, 21, 23, 26, 31, 32, 34, 35, 41, 42, 47, 52, 56, 64, 72, 76, 80 3) Something Written by a nonwhite author - 5, 16, 19, 22, 24, 31, 33, 39, 45, 48, 56, 62, 64, 65, 72, 82 4) Something written in the 1800s - 14 5) Something History Related (fictional or non-fiction your choice)- 21, 31 6) A book about or narrated by an animal - 7, 12, 71 7) A collection of essays. - 82 8) A work of Science Fiction - 6, 16, 19, 52, 54, 64, 69, 72, 73, 75, 80, 84 9) Something written by a musician - 74 10) Read a long book, something over 500 pages - 2, 16, 69 11) Read something about or set in NYC - 1, 33, 34, 51, 84 12) Read Airplane fiction (Patterson, ect) - 68 13) Read Something YA - 30, 77, 79 14) Wildcard! - 79 15) Something recently published - 4, 7, 9, 10, 11, 15, 16, 19, 20, 21, 22, 23,24,25, 29, 35, 39, 45, 52, 57, 58, 59, 60, 63, 64, 65, 68, 69, 70, 72, 73, 75, 76, 80, 84 16) That one book you’ve wanted to read for a while now - 2, 6, 30, 74 17) The First book in a series - 13, 17, 18, 21, 25, 38, 49, 75 18) A biography or autobiography - 28, 74 19) Read something from the lost generation (Fitzgerald, Hemmingway, ect.) or from the Beat Generation - 81 20) Read a banned book - 77, 79 21) A Short Story collection - 7, 11, 34, 41 22) It’s a Mystery - 15, 17, 24, 43, 48, 65, 73
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Jan 3, 2017 18:47
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ToxicFrog posted:[*] Well excuse me for trying to broaden your horizons.
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Jan 4, 2017 03:35
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So I didn't plan on doing this challenge at all and didn't bother looking into it, but I was wondering how many challenges I accidentally got. 1) Vanilla Number -> I got 46, which I'm pretty happy with 2) Something written by a woman -> I read 7, the best one being "The Story of my Teeth", Valeria Luiselli 3) Something Written by a nonwhite author -> The Parable of the Sower by Octavia E Butler 5) Something History Related (fictional or non-fiction your choice) -> Uh, many qualify I think, let's say Anabasis by Xenophon 6) A book about or narrated by an animal -> All Creatures Great and Small by James Herriot 7) A collection of essays. -> Uh, Dataclysm, Who We Are by Christian Rudder? 8) A work of Science Fiction -> Planetfall by Emma Newman 10) Read a long book, something over 500 pages -> Arcanum Unbounded by Brandon Sanderson 11) Read something about or set in NYC -> Extremely Loud & Incredibly Close ---- Jonathan Safran Foer 13) Read Something YA -> The Wee Free Men by Terry Pratchett 14) Wildcard! -> I'm counting a BOTM: It can’t happen here by Lewis Sinclair 15) Something recently published (up to a year. The year will be the day you start this challenge) -> Sharp Ends ---- Joe Abercrombie 16) That one book you’ve wanted to read for a while now. -> The Devil in the White City by Erik Larson 17) The First book in a series -> The Parable of the Sower by Octavia E Butler 18) A biography or autobiography -> The Black Count: Glory, Revolution, Betrayal, and the Real Count of Monte Christo ---- Tom Reiss 20) Read a banned book 21) A Short Story collection -> Antropology and a hundred other stories by Dan Rhodes 22) It’s a Mystery. -> Het Smelt by Lize Spit (not yet translated to English) So I managed 17 of the 22 challenges by accident, I consider that as a positive sign that my reading habits are already quite varied. Anyway, my 5 best books I read this year: - The Story of my Teeth - The Man in the High Castle - The Story of a New Name - Suddenly, a Knock on the Door - Death with Interruptions
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Jan 4, 2017 22:39
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screenwritersblues posted:Well excuse me for trying to broaden your horizons. Maybe your skin's too thin to be Booklord.
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Jan 4, 2017 22:42
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Walh Hara posted:- The Story of my Teeth This sounds interesting. I think I'll be picking it up at the library today. Thanks!
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Jan 4, 2017 22:48
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screenwritersblues posted:Well excuse me for trying to broaden your horizons. it's not broadening someone's horizons to suggest two groups of american dudes well known to normal people
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Jan 4, 2017 23:19
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December 107. Parable of the Talents - Octavia Butler 108. The Lost Time Accidents - John Wray 109. Butcher’s Crossing - John Williams 110. The Botany of Desire - Michael Pollan 111. The Association of Small Bombs - Karan Mahajan 112. Lud-in-the-Mist - Hope Mirrlees 113. A Christmas Carol - Charles Dickens 114. The Sot-Weed Factor - John Barth 115. A Gambler’s Anatomy - Jonathan Lethem 116. The Hobbit - J.R.R. Tolkien 117. The Hotel New Hampshire - John Irving 118. The Fellowship of the Ring (LOTR #1) - J.R.R. Tolkien Finished the year with 118 out of my original goal of 52. Reread some good ones - Christmas Carol and started LOTR - and read some... interesting new ones. The Sot-Weed Factor was a bawdy 700-page American take on Candide, and The Hotel New Hampshire was vintage Irving. (Weird family with incest issues? Check. Bear? Check. Random sojourn to Europe? Check.) The Association of Small Bombs was a pretty good, short book about terrorists and their victims, and Lud-in-the-Mist was a neat pre-Tolkien fairy tale. Finally, Parable of the Talents was probably the Best Book of the Month, continuing the story of Parable of the Sower's small community based around a new religion in the midst of a post-collapse America. A good year of reading!
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Jan 5, 2017 07:54
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So I didn't hit the booklord challenge, missing most of the same numbers as Walh Hara (although I know of at least 1 banned book I read, possibly more) but hitting most of the others several times over. My main personal challenge this year was to read exclusively works by women authors, and I ended up reading 80 books by something like 77 unique authors, the majority of them new to me. I am not going to list them all out, but here were some of the highlights: --- A Number by Caryl Churchill - this was recommended for the play challenge in the 2015 thread but I ended up saving it for 2016. It was really solid, more minimalist than I thought (literally 2 actors and no stage direction) but that allowed everything to be centered on the dialogue. Wolf Hall by Hilary Mantel - I don't usually read historical fiction but this was fantastic, both educational and extremely intriguing, giving insights into royal life in that time period as seen through modern eyes. The Warmth of Other Suns by Isabel Wilkerson - possibly the best book I read this past year, this told the stories of several black Americans who travelled north during the Great Migration in 3 different decades. Extremely heartbreaking reading about their reasons for eventually leaving, and how things went for each of them in the aftermath. Even though these were all success stories, it still gives insight into a tragic time (which is arguably still ongoing) in American history. Voices from Chernobyl by Svetlana Alexievich - obvious one to read due to the Nobel win, but this was a horror story in interview form. Knowing the raw facts about the accident is much different from reading actual accounts of survivors, and there are some super haunting scenes. Bel Canto by Ann Patchett - an excellent book about a hostage situation at an embassy in South America. Apparently it was made into an opera which will be broadcast on PBS next Friday which I am oddly super excited about. Women Without Men by Shahrnush Parsipur - a magical realism allegory about the life of women in Iran. It has some fantastically vivid scenes. The Book of the City of the Ladies by Christine de Pizan - recc'ed by CestMoi, I will post the review I posted in the "Quit Being a Child" thread: Guy A. Person posted:Reading de Pisan now and if you still haven't read it it is extremely good. Much better than I expected. It starts with the author saying "welp I was reading some book that said all women were evil and wanton so I guess I better pray to God to see how I can atone for my lovely womanly existence" (<- this is the exact tone it is hilariously sarcastic). So then 3 ladies appear to her: Reason, Rectitude and Justice and start telling her stories about famous and awesome women in history (although I think most if not all are pulled from mythology?). Pretty Monsters by Kelly Link - I've been a huge fan of Link for awhile now. This is one of her larger collections and has stories that have been collected elsewhere (which always annoys me) but it was still excellent. Link was also a finalist for the 2016 Pulitzer for her latest short story collection, I highly recommend checking her out. Americanah by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie - Adichie seems to be blowing up lately which is fantastic because she is brilliant. I've read this and Half a Yellow Sun and both were amazing, I would give the slight edge to Americanah though but mostly because it has some cool insights into race in America from an outsider-turned-insider perspective For Colored Girls Who Have Considered Suicide / When the Rainbow Is Enuf by Ntozake Shange - I found this on a random list of plays to read by women and didn't know what to expect. It is the first of what Shange coined as a choreopoem which combined poetry, dance, music and song. As such I would love to see this live, but even in written form it was beautiful. --- All in all this was a fantastic year. Most books I've ever read in a year and interestingly my most varied as I explored women writers in various genres and mediums.
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Jan 5, 2017 23:22
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I managed to hit all my goals this year, including reading some fiction each month, so I'm very happy. December: Fiction Goal Met! 117. The Rainmaker, by John Grisham This legal thriller features a just-graduated lawyer who crashes from a comfortable entry position into depending on criminal employers just to make rent. He gets one promising client, a family whose son will die because their medical insurance wrongfully denied coverage for a bone marrow transplant, and wings it from there. It’s exciting, with new developments happening in one of quite a few plots every chapter, and the characters are, if not sympathetic and enlightening, at least vivid. Some might find the present-tense narrative offputting. 118. Saga of the Swamp Thing (TPB Vol 1), by Alan Moore, Stephen Bissette, and John Totleben The art and writing in this book meld brilliantly: its blend of the archaic and mythic with the pulpy creates some truly great scenes, even scary scenes, especially when the primal fears of humanity take center stage. This is well worth reading. 119. Promethea (TPB Vol 1), by Alan Moore, J. H. Williams III, and Mick Gray Another volume one, another Alan Moore, at some point I need to buckle down and finish a series! Perhaps I’m stuck looking for something better even though I perfectly like what I have. Ah well. This one is about the real-world power of myth and legend, as a young woman is transformed into the avatar of a legendary warrior. Demons and dreams abound. There’s some really spectacular, surreal art as well. 120. God in a Cup: The Obsessive Quest for the Perfect Coffee, by Michaele Weissman I was surprised to like this book so much. Instead of being just a nice sideshow from my usual reading, it’s one of my favorites this year. The author is a journalist who enters the world of specialty coffee, meeting with its purveyors, its businessmen, and its farmers. She covers the economic and social justice aspects of coffee production just as fluently as she handles the more food-writing parts. Everything’s clear, and more importantly, interesting. One of the more intriguing parts to me was this subculture’s creation of ‘cupping’, which is to say, systematically drinking and evaluating coffee. It is a great example of how terminology influences behavior, as not only expert competitions but also small farming villages construct an environment for the scientific analysis of coffee tasting. Highly recommended. 121. Wizzywig: Portrait of a Serial Hacker, by Ed Piskor. This graphic novel is a life portrait of archetypical hacker BOINGTHUMP, and does a competent job of it. It is very cartoonish, from the way character proportions are just kinda hosed up throughout to the way the protagonist gets all the best bits of hacker lore in his backstory. But it also treats things realistically. Plenty of ‘hacking stuff’ is described accurately if narratively, and the main character does evolve in surprising, expected, ways. This was Piskor’s first ‘solo’ graphic novel, and I’ll be on the lookout for more from him. 122. We Stand on Guard, by Brian K. Vaughan, Steve Skroce, Matt Hollingsworth, and Fonografiks In the mid-future, America has invaded and occupied Canada to seize its water. This book follows a band of guerrillas as they fight the autonomous armies of the USA and inspire the populace. It’s pure pulp, and it’s pretty awesome. Some described it as ‘controversial’, but I can’t really see how it could offend anyone who has skin thicker than a grape’s. 123. Blankets, by Craig Thompson It’s a graphic story of high school love, and is one of the best graphic-format things I’ve read this year. it has simply fantastic art, visual design, plotting, and dialogue; it evokes youth, love, religion, art, perfectly. I’m very glad to have read it. 124. Super Graphic, by Tim Leong If you ever want a case study in how not to do graphic design or infographics, hit this book up. It purports to be “A Visual Guide to the Comic Book Universe” but it seems more like the infographic version of drunken rambling. There are way too many “Hey I drew a character but it’s a blocky symbol or graph-like, isn’t that clever!” pages. This thing is almost 200 pages, with about 60 interesting ones, total. The designer should have cut the size and honed his best examples. 125. Shadow of the Colossus, by Nick Suttner Suttner parallels a play-through of SotC with a running meta-commentary, covering the game’s design, predecessors, secrets and fan base. It’s very literate, very informative, and altogether a great companion piece to a great game. Some of the Bossfight Books series can be take-it-or-leave-it, but this one is up there with Spelunky as a valuable accompaniment to its subject. 126. In the Kingdom of the Sick, by Laurie Edwards Edwards explores the landscape of chronic illness expertly. Her style is a bit out of my preferred range, with its extensive quotations left to argue for themselves. And sometimes her subject, such as Chronic Fatigue Syndrome or Morgellons, is just kinda alien to my experience and knowledge. But this book does wonders for framing the world, not as something settled but as an ongoing argument or negotiation. She destroys the ideas of certainty that give harm to some and comfort to others, and replaces the notion that one person can understand a part of the world with the bare fact that we need other people to reach true understanding. A very valuable book. 127. On Bullshit, by Harry G. Frankfurt I would recommend this book to anyone who I’m talking to about Donald Trump’s preferred rhetorical style. So often college-educated or rationally inclined people thing that the purpose of speech, even argumentative speech, is to present a version of the truth and convince others of it. Here, Frankfurt explores the idea that for bullshitters, whether you believe them or not is completely incidental to the main goal. It’s a super quick read (much quicker than watching Breaking Bad enough to hear “You can’t bullshit a bullshitter in the right context”) and well worth it. 128. The Orchestra: A Very Short Introduction, by D. Kern Holoman I had meant to read Leonard Bernstein’s wonderful Childrens’ Concerts book as my work by a musician, but realized too late that my preferred method of playing and listening along would take more time than I had left in the year. Enter this book, which I read on NYE. I hadn’t expected much from it other than brevity, but was pleasantly surprised when I got a smattering of different histories of the orchestra, all competently written. Holoman covers the economic, artistic, cultural, musical, architectural and political aspects of these organizations in a really eye-opening way. I especially enjoyed how he uses cross-border performances pre-WW1 and in the Cold War to explore and combat the notion that shared arts cultures can actually lead to peace rather than mere temporary goodwill. 129. Love and Rockets, New Stories No. 1, by the Hernandez Brothers This is an awesome collection of quirky, evocative comics. It’s bookended by the adventures of a new all-female superhero team, and includes surrealism, cartoon escapism, body horror, and more. Simply excellent. 1) Vanilla Number - 129/80 2) Something written by a woman - Twenty Fragments of a Ravenous Youth 3) Something written by a nonwhite author - March 4) Something written in the 1800s - Dracula 5) Something History Related (fictional or non-fiction your choice) - Forgotten Ally: China’s World War II 1937-1945 6) A book about or narrated by an animal - Cujo 7) A collection of essays. - Men Explain Things to Me 8) A work of Science Fiction - Nova 9) Something written by a musician - The Orchestra: A VSI 10) Read a long book, something over 500 pages - The Sea and Civilization 11) Read something about or set in NYC - Ex Machina 12) Read Airplane fiction (Patterson, ect) - Rainmaker 13) Read Something YA - A Wrinkle in Time 14) Wildcard! - Loath Letters 15) Something recently published - The Making of Donald Trump 16) That one book you’ve wanted to read for a while now - Masters of Doom 17) The First book in a series - Ancillary Justice 18) A biography or autobiography - A Lawyer’s Life 19) Read something from the lost generation (Fitzgerald, Hemmingway, ect.) or from the Beat Generation - And The Hippos Were Boiled in Their Tanks 20) Read a banned book - The Handmaid’s Tale 21) A Short Story collection - Dubliners 22) It’s a Mystery. - The Spy Who Came In From the Cold
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Jan 6, 2017 22:28
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Tiggum posted:Principles of Screenwriting was terrible. In so many ways. The author comes across as a pompous, arrogant, narcissist who knows practically nothing and is even worse at communicating it. But he's apparently very highly regarded as a teacher of screenwriting? And this supposed expert on film doesn't seem to know of many films (he continually goes back to Kramer vs. Kramer, Chinatown and Casablanca as his examples for everything) and doesn't seem to have bothered actually watching the films he quotes - the most egregious example being that famous line from Star Wars "Go with the Force, go with the Force". I enjoyed your review of this. He does sound like a robot trying to explain human things: get in the proper lane according to the music. Gertrude Perkins posted:
That time travel book sounds bizarre. I didn't know there were many women writers of the Beat generation (though why wouldn't there be?), so it's cool you read their work. Not surprising that Kerouac sounds like an arse.
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Jan 7, 2017 21:46
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That's a wrap for this thread folks. Join us in the new thread. https://forums.somethingawful.com/showthread.php?threadid=3803016
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Jan 23, 2017 00:52
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