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I got my reading mojo back apparently, because I finished 9 books in January! Pretty much all good reads, too! I WOULD ALSO LOVE A WILDCARD! 1. Red Harvest by Dashiell Hammett Started out ticking off two challenge categories since this just entered public domain and was BOTM for January. This is one of the early hardboiled, hard-drinking noir detective novels and as a lot of people in the BOTM thread pointed out it almost feels like a parody sometimes. There are some hilarious turns of phrase and the pace is blisteringly fast. Really worth checking out! 2. Black Flame by Gretchen Felker-Martin This was sort of an ARC since the book hasn't come out yet, but if you are into the highly specific sub-genre of found footage/haunted old movies like in Gemma Files' Experimental Film, add this to your TBR. It's gnarly and queer and what you'd expect if you've read Felker-Martin's other books, and it's a quick 200 pages or so. 3. In the Kingdom of Ice: The Grand and Terrible Polar Voyage of the USS Jeannette by Hampton Sides What it says! This was a neat read, definitely very pop history and focuses on telling an exciting story, but there's not a lot out there about the Jeannette so I was glad to finally learn more about it since a lot of later polar expeditions kept an eye out for it. Great for polar-disaster heads. 4. The Daughters' War by Christopher Buehlman Prequel to Blacktongue Thief, but stands on its own pretty well. This was a lot of fun and also pretty brutal. Buehlman's goblins in these books are legitimately alien and horrifying in a pretty unique way. This was basically exactly what I wanted from a military fantasy book (and it skips boot camp!). Maybe even better than Blacktongue Thief, so definitely grab this if you liked that. 5. Dehiscent by Ashley Deng This is a super short novella set in a very weird house in a climate-ravaged almost post-apocalyptic China. The main character is a young girl discovering the secret of the house that magically provides food for her family when everyone else is nearly starving. Kind of uplifting despite the pitch? 6. The House of Open Wounds by Adrian Tchaikovsky I haven't read the other books in this series, but this works really well by itself. It's a military fantasy novel that centers a field hospital and the ragtag group of people and their (illegal) gods who operate it. The plot dominoes did stack up in a way that I had pretty well predicted the finale a good deal before it happened, but it was a really satisfying conclusion. 7. At the Mountains of Madness by H.P. Lovecraft Somehow hadn't read this yet, but I'm obviously a huge mark for stories with polar exploration and horror so this was a lot of fun. The beginning is a long list of partly fictional scientific equipment and weird science observations, which might bore a lot of people, but I loved it. It's (thankfully) not as explicitly racist some of his other stuff, though you can definitely read that into the whole deal with the Shoggoths, but it's Lovecraft, so you probably already know what you're getting into. 8. The Lotus Empire by Tasha Suri The final book in a trilogy set in a sort of fantasy-India where there are real gods warring and people with magic powers fighting each other. It had a bit of the epic fantasy foible of characters being shuffled around a map until the finale happened, some of them almost forgotten or not doing much of consequence until the end, but it was OK as a conclusion. I think Suri has some neat ideas and I could see her growing even more in whatever she does next. 9. The Great Polar Fraud: Cook, Peary, and Byrd -- How Three American Heroes Duped the World Into Thinking They Had Reached the North Pole by Anthony Galvin Another that is what it says. Most of this focuses on Cook and Peary since they had far more eventful lives leading up to their North Pole claims than Byrd did. It takes a while, but I was glad the author eventually pointed out how much of a piece of poo poo Peary was when it came to how he treated other people and especially native peoples. This is informative though if you don't know much about the race to the pole or how eccentric many of the people involved were. 1. Set a goal for number of books or another personal challenge! 9/52 2. Make sure at least 25% of the books you read this year are not written by men. 3/9~ 3. Make sure a least 25% of the books you read this year are written by writers of colour. 2/9~ 4. Make sure at least 10% of the books you read this year are written by LGBTQ writers. 2/9~ 5. Read something fictional about a real person. 6. Read two books published in the same month. 7. Read a book by someone known better for making other art (music, sculpture, film, etc). 8. Read something told from a non-human point of view. 9. Read something with a mystery at its centre. -- Dehiscent 10. Read something that recently entered the public domain. -- Red Harvest 11. Read: something with a colon in the title. -- In The Kingdom of Ice 12. Ask someone in this thread for a Wildcard, and read it! 13. Participate in the TBB Book Of The Month thread! -- Red Harvest 14. Read something in verse. 15. Read something with a high body count. -- The Daughters' War 16. Read something with a happy ending. Read at least 10 hardcopies I already own: 2/10
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Jan 31, 2025 14:24
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January went pretty good. Well on pace for my probably too-modest goal of 40 books this year, although I'm going to have to pile on some racial minorities later on to get booklord. Right now I'm in the middle of Warlock by Oakley Hall, The Commodore by Patrick O'Brian, and The Mayor of Casterbridge by Thomas Hardy.
1. Set a goal for number of books or another personal challenge! 2. Make sure at least 25% of the books you read this year are not written by men. [30%] 3. Make sure a least 25% of the books you read this year are written by writers of colour. [10%] 4. Make sure at least 10% of the books you read this year are written by LGBTQ writers. [0-10%, there's a case for Montagu] 6. Read two books published in the same month. 7. Read a book by someone known better for making other art (music, sculpture, film, etc). 8. Read something told from a non-human point of view. 10. Read something that recently entered the public domain. 12. Ask someone in this thread for a Wildcard, and read it! 13. Participate in the TBB Book Of The Month thread! 14. Read something in verse. Cassian of Imola fucked around with this message at 19:03 on Jan 31, 2025 |
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Jan 31, 2025 18:59
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Cassian of Imola posted:The Interesting Narrative of the Life of Olaudah Equiano, Or Gustavus Vassa, The African, Olaudah Equiano How was this? Would you say it is...wildcard worthy?
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Jan 31, 2025 19:16
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Kuule hain nussivan posted:How was this? Would you say it is...wildcard worthy? I read it with Oroonoko deliberately, as they are both famous works critical of slavery and printed in Britain before abolition. It's pretty affecting, and more frank and detailed about the realities of the slave trade than you might expect after its tedious (but conventional for the time) introduction/preface. Equiano is also more straightforwardly abolitionist than Behn, who, it becomes clear, is more appalled by the enslavement of a prince than by slavery itself. Wildcard worthy? I dunno. He has a beautiful style, but it's not a quick read, and it's not a novel; you'd get quite a lot out of some choice excerpts.
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Feb 1, 2025 00:54
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DurianGray posted:I WOULD ALSO LOVE A WILDCARD! Three Men in a Boat by Jerome K. Jerome If you've already read that, then If on a winter's night a traveler by Italo Calvino
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Feb 1, 2025 01:13
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Cassian of Imola posted:Three Men in a Boat by Jerome K. Jerome I haven't read it yet, but it looks neat! Thank you so much!
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Feb 1, 2025 02:36
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PLEASE GIVE ME A WILDCARD! preferably non-male, or non-white, or lgbt, or any combination of such! Hopefully I remember this year to try to do this monthly, not not just make 2 or 3 mega-update posts. From NYD until today: 1, 2, 3) Children of Time, Children of Ruin, & Children of Memory by Adrian Tchaikovsky -- kinda cheating with CoTime because i started reading it in the end of December, but including it here to furnish the whole trilogy. I absolutely whipped through the first book. It has such a breakneck pace and explosive opening. The setting is a little dumb but that is far outweighed by how much fun it is (iykyk). The first one really felt like it had wrapped up the story and I was delighted to learn that it was a trilogy. Unfortunately, the series drags on with each new book, both in pacing and novel things for the characters to do. The second one felt like it was 95% table setting with 5% payoff in a way that wasn't satisfying. So I had high hopes for the final book, which unfortunately felt like an episode of Star Trek: TNG mercilessly stretched into an excruciating long format. Did not like this one as a series, but the first one is a banger and can stand on its own as far as I'm concerned. 4, 5) Exit Strategy & Rogue Protocol by Martha Wells -- went through each in a weekend apiece listening while walking/doing housework. They remain awesome snacks with the exact amount of attention demanded as a 90 minute action flick. A simple sugar, a good one. Curious about the next book, which as i understand is a whole-rear end novel with a different structure. For now, I remain a die hard fan of the Murderbot, the bot who murders but has a heart of gold & keeps getting into scrapes while trying to find out if maybe One Day He Will Be Able To As You Humans Say, Love. 6, 7) The Time of Contempt & The Blood of Elves by Anderzej Sapkowski -- God do I love Geralt and Dandelion being idiots together. These have a very different pace than the short story collections. They use that to do a lot more in-depth world building in the margins. Having already consumed witcher 2, 3, and some of the Netflix show, I was really looking forward to starting the series proper and it did not disappoint. It's a breezy low fantasy world to kinda get lost in admiring its mythological roots. The mage fights are fun and the bursts of action really carry everything along. These went down super easy. Much faster than I thought they would. Why can't you be like this, Ice and Fire??? Shut up about Iron Islands heraldry! 8, 9) The Vagrant & The Hammer and The Goat by Peter Newman -- This is Berserk if Berserk was a western sci-fantasy novel with Gene Wolfe/Caves of Qud/Jack Vance megapocalypse poo poo going down. High literature it is not, but it was for me a page turner. Also had notes of Between Two Fires. Extremely fun pulp. The second book is an interquel novella that is more of the same, in all ways. - Set a goal for number of books or another personal challenge! 9/45
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Feb 1, 2025 03:54
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A slow-paced start to the year for me. I'd better pick up the pace in February. 1. The Line of Beauty by Alan Hollinghurst The 1980s! Tory politicians! Rich people getting off with each other at parties! No, it's not Jilly Cooper's Rivals, although I may well get to that later. Took a while for me to get into it, but around halfway through something clicked and by the end it was really punching me in the gut. This is my friend's favourite book and she tells me I'd get even more out of it if I'd read A Dance to the Music of Time, but unfortunately I haven't. Don't dance with Thatcher. 2. Not in Love by Ali Hazelwood You know what you're getting with Ali Hazelwood: a fun, frothy romance between two unfeasibly hot nerds. This was cute. 3. The Wager: A Tale of Shipwreck, Mutiny and Murder by David Grann The story of a British Navy voyage around Cape Horn in 1741 gone very wrong, and the subsequent PR battle over whose fault it was. Many of the men involved kept detailed journals (including Lord Byron's grandfather, who was 16 at the time) and that plus the pacing makes it extremely immersive. My one complaint about this is that I wish it was longer because I was sad when I finished it, but maybe that's a sign of narrative efficiency. 4. Red Harvest by Dashiell Hammett I also went for the double here. This was a lot of fun to read. I loved the stylised language and the fact that everyone involved was just a vengeful bastard, the protagonist included. --- Currently I am more than halfway through Death Comes for the Archbishop by Willa Cather, but that'll have to wait for February's update. I also started Murder in the Hellfire Club by Donald Zochert, which I admit I picked up entirely because of the cover, but I did not get very far into it. Check out that cover though: 
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Feb 1, 2025 09:38
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UltraShame posted:kinda cheating with CoTime because i started reading it in the end of December, but including it here to furnish the whole trilogy. I was like 10 pages from the end of the insanely long Lonesome Dove at midnight on New Year's but it still counted!
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Feb 1, 2025 15:29
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UltraShame posted:From NYD until today:
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Feb 2, 2025 05:02
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I finished six books in January, including some pretty hefty tomes! 1 - Red Harvest, by Dashiel Hammett. First book of the year, first Book Club book of the year, and it's great! Intense, bloody, callous and mean, and things escalate really well with a surprising bodycount and a lot of sticky ends for a lot of real bastards and innocents alike - if there really are any innocents in Poinsonville. Hammett could really write moral greyness, and I kept up with it over only two days of reading. Good good stuff. 2 - Kushiel's Dart, by Jacqueline Carey. Nine hundred pages of courtly intrigue, politics, espionage, medieval sabre-rattling, and intense BDSM. Some pages are about 50% proper nouns, and at several points I just plain forgot who people were and how the different pieces of plot fit together. But I was never bored, and always kept going to the next chapter and the next. Carey's world is an alternate Europe with a multifaceted pantheon, a queernormative and sexually open society that still has its own issues with prejudice and mistrust - remarkably progressive for a fantasy brick from 25 years ago. And Carey manages to keep things nuanced and engrossing even through the self-indulgent excesses of sex and convoluted plotting. I think that having a central character whose Big Special Thing is -being acted upon- forced Carey to be more thoughtful and inventive in how Phèdre's role in things evolves over the course of the narrative. And her role really does evolve, in ways that feel natural and measured even drawn out over hundreds of pages. It's quite remarkable.  3 - The Motion of Light in Water: Sex and Science Fiction Writing in the East Village, by Samuel R. Delany. Was really excited to read this, and Delany does not disappoint. It's moving, funny, strange, exciting, and even though the bulk of it only covers a few years, it feels like an epic. The various fixations that Delany describes really illuminate some of the recurring themes and features of his novels that I've noticed, which was cool. His writing on race, on sexuality, on navigating an open marriage, all of it is gripping and beautiful. Openly self-aware about his self-reflections being imperfect and contradicting facts, too. I will probably read this again, returning to passages for inspiration and uplift and catharsis. Really drat good. 4 - By Night In Chile, by Roberto Bolaño (trans. by Chris Andrews). This short novel is just one big paragraph, huh. It's a long and rambling and strange anecdotal narrative that turns darker and more frightening as things careen and stumble towards an ending. This is not to say that it ever feels slapdash or accidental: Bolaño seems to know exactly when to trist the knife or surprise the reader with a left turn or to tease out a circular discussion until it reaches a breaking point. It's funny, too, but of course my lack of knowledge about Chilean literature or history does limit how well it hit me. Still, a good book, one I'm glad to finally get to. 5 - Breasts and Eggs, by Mieko Kawakami (trans. by Sam Bett & David Boyd). An emotionally heavy novel about women's bodies, parenthood, childhood, loss, regret, poverty, and powerful doses of trauma. The first section of the book, with the main character Natsu reconnecting with her sister and niece, is definitely the most engaging, exploring ideas of womanhood and bodies and the difficulty of communication. And then the book keeps going, after a gap of several years, and it becomes a smaller and more depressing novel about an asexual woman trying to make it as a writer while starting to look for ways to have a child as a single mother. There are some really good and difficult conversations between characters, and some touching and sad sequences - the most engaging scenes are when Natsu loses herself in a vivid memory or daydream that blends past and present and lays bare her ideas about herself and her relationships. But Kawakami keeps repeating herself, and a lot of the book is very dry. The overall experience was not a good one, and it's a shame because it starts so strongly. 6 - Babel: Or the Necessity of Violence: An Arcane History of the Oxford Translators' Revolution, by R.F. Kuang. Easily the most frustrating book I've read in some time. Kuang takes a really cool and interesting premise and wraps it in layers upon layers of exhausting, over-explained tedium. At the core of the setting is a neat idea for magic based on the tension between languages, the flaws of translation giving rise fo immense power and potential. There's a secretive but very influential Oxford University department for studying and producing such magic. And there's an underground resistance movement seeking to free this language-magic for the good of the oppressed masses of the colonised world? That's great! Exactly what I, a huge nerd and ex-academic with an interest in linguistics, would want. And then there are over five hundred pages of dry, stilted prose to ensure that any interest was beaten out of me.It's a joyless, miserable, self-satisfied slog. I wanted to wrestle the premise away from Kuang and give it to someone else to do better with the themes and setting. The cool ideas buried under all this sludge deserve much better. Longer reviews on my goodreads here! Sounds like I'm not the only one starting the year with some bangers (and duds)!
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Feb 2, 2025 05:47
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Cassian of Imola posted:I read it with Oroonoko deliberately, as they are both famous works critical of slavery and printed in Britain before abolition. It's pretty affecting, and more frank and detailed about the realities of the slave trade than you might expect after its tedious (but conventional for the time) introduction/preface. Equiano is also more straightforwardly abolitionist than Behn, who, it becomes clear, is more appalled by the enslavement of a prince than by slavery itself. Wildcard worthy? I dunno. He has a beautiful style, but it's not a quick read, and it's not a novel; you'd get quite a lot out of some choice excerpts. Darn, guess I'll wait a while longer. It's early in the year after all. Anyway, January is over and here's my tally. Titles in language read, english title (if available) in parentheses.
So far so good. Kuule hain nussivan fucked around with this message at 12:29 on Mar 1, 2025 |
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Feb 2, 2025 19:23
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Name: Lifg Personal Challenge: 40 books Booklord 2025? No I forgot to update on the last two months of 2024, mostly because doing longer writing and text formatting on a phone is difficult and my laptop is barely working. January Funny Story by Emily Henry Do other people sometimes take breaks inbetween more serious books? Last year it was a couple of celebrity bios. This month it was last year’s most super popular romance novel. This book was horny, which was fun to learn because I see people reading this in public all the time. The Sellout by Paul Beatty I say this everytime: This book was funny. So goddamn funny. The image of the father, and everything he is, is permanently imprinted in my mind. James by Percival Everett I love Everett. Nothing more to say. So far Erasure is still my favorite, but this was excellent. Never Let Me Go by Kazuo Ishiguro Man this book broke me. It was a book that was designed to be sad, and it was. Stuff Matters: Exploring the Marvelous Materials That Shape Our Man-Made World by Mark Miodownik Last year I realized I spent too much time in my life reading physics, as most male nerds are wont to do, and not enough on the other hard sciences. I love a book that lets me walk outside and understand what I’m seeing a whole lot better. I might try to read a book on cement. The Poisonwood Bible by Barbara Kingsolver Read 99% of this last year but didn’t technically finish it till Jan 1. It went from somewhat boring to extremely intense all at once, and then never let up. It was both a passionate plea for people to understand what happened in the Congo, via this fictional family, and also very much a white person explaining the Congo and Africa.
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Feb 3, 2025 14:46
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Had a good swift start to January and read some decent books. Cautiously optimistic about this year, for reading purposes only. 1. Catalina by Karla Cornejo Villavicencio - Catalina is an undocumented girl who gets into Harvard. This follows her last few semesters as she struggles with classes and class distinction as well as attempts to pass the DREAM act. It comes to a head when her grandfather receives a deportation order. Pretty solid book. Flirts with stream of consciousness. Some seemed to find the narrator annoying, but I kinda dug her energy. 2. Bury Your Gays by Chuck Tingle - An order comes down from The Algorithm dictating that screenwriter Misha either have his gay leads not consummate their relationship and go on as straight, or they get the long awaited kiss and must die. That's what's best for profit. When it looks like he won't buckle under, he starts seeing monsters from horrors he's written stalk him and his friends. So yeah, this was real good. Top to bottom, enjoyed it. Guess I'm a buckaroo. 3. The Murders in Great Diddling by Katerina Bivald - A charming town. A blocked writer. A murder. Too many secrets. Multiple overlapping cons. A lot of funny writing. On the whole a really solid and enjoyable mystery. 4. The Clockwork Boys by T Kingfisher - Criminals who would otherwise face death are offered commutation if they can sneak into the enemy city and steal the secret of the clockwork boys, giant clockwork seeming centaurs that are destroying everything. Part 1 of two and it's fun. 5. The Wonder Engine by T Kingfisher - The thrilling conclusion to part 1. Fun reads, some decent sort and sorcery sort of thing with some romance. Like 'em. 6. The FItzgerald Ruse by Mark de Castrique - Sam Blackman #2. What's the connection between Fitzgerald memorabilia, Nazis, and Blackwater mercs? Sam better figure it out before he gets killed. These are generally pretty fun, I'll likely read 3. 7. The West Passage by Jared Pechacek - In a decaying palace, Kew apprentice to the Guardian of the West Passage must travel to the Black Tower to notify them that the beast is coming. Pell, an apprentice of the Grey Ladies must also travel to the center to find out why winter is coming early. This is out and out the most imaginative book I've read in ages. There's a very good sense of a decaying civilization. There's systems that are arcane and half forgotten. There's some just startling stuff. The only complaint is that some of the weirdness distracts a bit. It's quite a novel. 8. Mechanize my Hands to War by Erin K Wagner - In the near future, government agents fight against an anti-android militia. This asks some interesting questions about androids and potential roles in society and some questions about what it is to be human, almost in a PKD vein. That said there's a lot of jumping around in time and I found it frustrating. BOOKLORD 2025 CHALLENGE 1. Set a goal for number of books or another personal challenge! 8/75 2. Make sure at least 25% of the books you read this year are not written by men. 5/75 3. Make sure a least 25% of the books you read this year are written by writers of colour. 1/75 4. Make sure at least 10% of the books you read this year are written by LGBTQ writers. 1/75 5. Read something fictional about a real person. 6. Read two books published in the same month. 7. Read a book by someone known better for making other art (music, sculpture, film, etc). 8. Read something told from a non-human point of view. 9. Read something with a mystery at its centre. - The Murders at Great Diddling 10. Read something that recently entered the public domain. 11. Read: something with a colon in the title. 12. Ask someone in this thread for a Wildcard, and read it! 13. Participate in the TBB Book Of The Month thread! 14. Read something in verse. 15. Read something with a high body count. 16. Read something with a happy ending.
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Feb 4, 2025 04:14
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Books of January: 1. The Library at Night by Alberto Manguel is a series of musings and historical studies of libraries of all shapes and sizes around the world. Catnip for bibliophiles. 2. Madame Bovary had a lot to praise, but I suspect I'll like Flaubert's Sentimental Education more. 3. The Hunt for Red October was followed up with my first viewing of the movie. Not sure which I prefer, though Jack Ryan feels less like a blown-up author insert in the film. 4. Philip and Alexander: Kings and Conquerors by Adrian Goldsworthy did its job in telling what the accounts say, taking care to point out all the omissions and contradictions. 5. The Worldly Philosophers: The Lives, Times, and Ideas of the Great Economic Thinkers by Robert Heilbroner had very charming accounts of the work of Thorstein Veblen and John M Keynes, among many other quirky men who didn't seem like the type to write earth-shaking books. 6. The Rise and Fall of the Galactic Empire by Chris Kempshall is my first and so far only venture into science fiction this year. As you'd think, a history of the Star Wars galaxy in the way William Shirer would have done it. Suffers from hewing close to what the extant movies, shows, and comics depict, and being mostly unable to acknowledge major events outside of those. 7. The Storm Before the Storm: The Beginning of the End of the Roman Republic by Mike Duncan - might as well have just relistened to the corresponding episodes of the History of Rome I wasn't really intending to give regular reading updates, the reason I'm posting is that I got started on The Line Upon a Wind, half of my goal for the year. The book begins with a quick history of the first few thousand years of ocean travel, to better contextualize the war that started in 1793. It's probably not too big of a surprise that I want to read this as a preparation/digestive for venturing further into the Aubrey-Maturin books.
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Feb 5, 2025 08:28
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Name: 8one6 Personal Challenge: 75 books, at least 12 non-fiction and at least 12 that show up on multiple "classics" or "must read" lists (I'll admit this one is vague on purpose) Booklord 2025? No
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Feb 7, 2025 07:42
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Ben Nevis posted:2. Bury Your Gays by Chuck Tingle - An order comes down from The Algorithm dictating that screenwriter Misha either have his gay leads not consummate their relationship and go on as straight, or they get the long awaited kiss and must die. That's what's best for profit. When it looks like he won't buckle under, he starts seeing monsters from horrors he's written stalk him and his friends. So yeah, this was real good. Top to bottom, enjoyed it. Guess I'm a buckaroo. I keep seeing this in books shops (including today) and being tempted. You said you enjoyed it so it's worth grabbing?
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Feb 8, 2025 14:14
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Tingle good!!
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Feb 8, 2025 18:10
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freelop posted:I keep seeing this in books shops (including today) and being tempted. You said you enjoyed it so it's worth grabbing? I have that one on my pile of To Read, and I found Camp Damascus to be incredibly fun pulp. Pounded in the butt by a sentient booklord thread recommendation.
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Feb 8, 2025 18:41
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A little late, but here's my January update! 1. Shut Up You're Pretty by Téa Mutonji - A collection of interconnected short stories about the life experiences of a young woman. It had some beautiful prose, and I recommend it, but it made me quite sad. 2. Too Far by Rich Shapero - A book that has been sitting on my shelf since a friend gave it to me as a gift in high school because they "thought the cover was pretty". I found the writing style to be tiresome and the author's continuous habit of having the child protagonists strip naked to be really concerning. I don't recommend it. 3. A Psalm for the Wild-Built by Becky Chambers - An easy read about a travelling monk who is searching for their "true" purpose. It was pleasant, but a bit slow until the other main character appeared around the halfway point, after which I started really enjoying the book. I recommend it if you feel a bit down and want a short story to cheer you up a little. 4. Death and Croissants by Ian Moore - A fun story about a mildly pathetic owner of a bed-and-breakfast who gets roped into a missing persons investigation. The female supporting cast members continuously steal the show and the book is a silly and fun time overall. Would recommend if you like murder mysteries that don't take themselves too seriously. 1. Set a goal for number of books or another personal challenge! 4/48 2. Make sure at least 25% of the books you read this year are not written by men. (2 -> 50% so far) 3. Make sure a least 25% of the books you read this year are written by writers of colour. (1 -> 25% so far) 4. Make sure at least 10% of the books you read this year are written by LGBTQ writers. (1 -> 25% so far) 5. Read something fictional about a real person. 7. Read a book by someone known better for making other art (music, sculpture, film, etc). 8. Read something told from a non-human point of view. 10. Read something that recently entered the public domain. 11. Read: something with a colon in the title. 12. Ask someone in this thread for a Wildcard, and read it! 13. Participate in the TBB Book Of The Month thread! 14. Read something in verse. 15. Read something with a high body count.
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Feb 8, 2025 19:03
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January Update: 1 The National Museum of Natural History by Philip Kopper (non-fiction) An interesting look at the Smithsonian as a collection of museums by purpose instead of by subjects or specific collections. Some of the language in a couple of places is a little rough since it was written in 1982. The selection of photos throughout the book is fantastic and easily the biggest reason to read this. 2 A Confederacy of Dunces by John Kennedy Toole (counts as a classic) I loving hated this. I hate Ignatius. I dislike the rest of the characters. This was an overly long, meandering slog. 3 Snow Crash by Neal Stephenson (shows up on multiple "classics of cyberpunk" lists so I'm counting it as a classic.) This was a really fun read! Hiro and Y. T. are great pov characters, the plot is a solid mix of action and 80s "computers are basically magic" nonsense. 4 Non-Stop by Brian W. Aldiss I love stories where you you get to see characters discover the shocking truth of the universe. This is pretty good for a scifi novel from the late 60s. The author does a decent job with the setting, the descriptions are evocative, and the plot is fast paced enough to forgive the relatively flat characters. 5 Not Till We Are Lost (Bobiverse #5) by Dennis E. Taylor I enjoyed it more than Heaven's River. It sheds most of the human politics for a mystery near the galactic core, a new set of aliens, and a real bone headed problem one group of Bob's has caused for everyone else. 6 The Expansion (Legend of the Arch Magus #1) by Michael Sisa This is extremely rote. Generic setting, generic magic, generic protagonist that faces no real struggle or hardship, no real difference between any of the supporting characters, nothing of interest. This is extruded light novel paste. 7 The Luminous Dead by Caitlin Starling It's a long, circular argument between two characters it's impossible to care about enough to either love or hate. There are also only so many ways to describe a cave setting before it also becomes incredibly repetitive. Every attempt made to paint the setting and circumstances as frightening or horrific just makes reading the book that much more tedious. 8 Agents of Dreamland (Tinfoil Dossier #1) by Caitlín R. Kiernan Cold War eldritch horror/Lovecraft. It's perfectly okay. It sets up a story that could be great but it also fails to grab me enough to want to immediately jump into book two.
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Feb 9, 2025 16:57
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Finished Steal This Book (knocking off 1 of the 15 books I pledged). As I said in the "What have you just finished" thread, it's an interesting time capsule, both of what has changed, and more importantly, what hasn't. Currently working on Red Harvest and Buzzfeed Unsolved Supernatural (which would cover "Read a book by someone who's most famous for some other form of media").
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Feb 10, 2025 17:22
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DurianGray posted:I WOULD ALSO LOVE A WILDCARD! EDIT: durian already had a wildcard, i didn't see - these are up for the taking: Any given Emily Dickinson poetry collection War Against the Weak by Edwin Black - [nonfic] a near-complete history and analysis of eugenics as it was implemented in America The Rainbow Abyss by Barbara Hambly - breezy low-fantasy pulp-rear end-pulp Artemis by Andy Weir - (do not read this, I included it only as a suicide option) UltraShame fucked around with this message at 01:33 on Feb 12, 2025 |
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Feb 12, 2025 00:44
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8. Barchester Towers by Anthony Trollope is comparable in its romance and wit to an Austen book, but with a more sprawling plot that spends more time on side characters. 9. The Discovery of France: A Historical Geography from the Revolution to the First World War by Graham Robb, a long series of anecdotes and observations on how the peasantry of France experienced modern times. 10. Character Limit: How Elon Musk Destroyed Twitter consisted mainly of things I was fully aware of when they happened. Didn't learn much. I'm now a quarter through A Line Upon the Wind, making this a progress of 12.5% through by reading goals. The highlight of these chapters was the lengthy account of the Glorious First of June, a battle I'd not been familiar with before due to Horatio Nelson's absence from the scene.
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Feb 16, 2025 10:58
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Lawman0: goal, just finish as many as I can. Lets go with at least 10-15 books. 1: The king in yellow. 2: How not to die alone by richard roper. 3: How not to be wrong: The power of mathematical thinking by Jordan Ellenberg 4: The grownup by Gillian Flynn 5: How Fascism works: By Jason Stanley - Very nice overview 6: Artemis: By Andy Weir 7: The Witcher: Blood of Elves By Andrzej Sapkowski 8: The Witcher: The time of Contempt 9: The Witcher: Baptism of Fire 10: 1984: Orwell Lawman 0 fucked around with this message at 04:08 on Nov 18, 2025 |
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Feb 18, 2025 14:50
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Name: TV Zombie Personal Challenge: Read The Brother Karamavoz Booklord 2025? (Yes or No) No. I don’t think I have the stamina for it.
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Feb 26, 2025 14:20
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Highlight of the month was definitely Ovid, but Fosse, Krleža and Porter were pretty good, too. otherwise, a mixed bag. much of what I read in february ended up being kind of mid at best. not entirely sure what I want to read next. Poguemahone, maybe? 2. Make sure at least 25% of the books you read this year are not written by men. 3. Make sure a least 25% of the books you read this year are written by writers of colour. 4. Make sure at least 10% of the books you read this year are written by LGBTQ writers. 5. Read something fictional about a real person. 8. Read something told from a non-human point of view. 10. Read something that recently entered the public domain. 12. Ask someone in this thread for a Wildcard, and read it! 13. Participate in the TBB Book Of The Month thread! 16. Read something with a happy ending. 13/25, 2/4 tomes (>800pp.) 1. Shëkufe Tadayoni Heiberg (2024): Livets verber: Tilføjelser til Nudansk ordbog (Life's verbs: additions to the modern danish dictionary) 2. Thomas Hylland Eriksen (2024): Det umistelige - Fra global ensretting til et nytt mangfold (a title that's difficult to translate well. The unlosable, perhaps? a non-fiction book about all the ways modern capitalism homogenizes everything in its path, from culture and language, to biodiversity, our ways of living, etc. and how that loss affects us.) 3. Gunnhild Øyehaug (2024): Her kjem sola (here comes the sun). 4. Johan Harstad (2024): Under brosteinen, stranden! (971 pages. the title is taken from a slogan of the 1968 protests in France, which was "Sous les pavés, la plage!") 5. Miroslav Krleža (1932): The return of Philip Latinowicz 6. Nils Bjelland Grønvold (2024): Den grønne boka 7. Eva Vezhnavets (2023): What are you looking for, wolf? 8. Stig Dagerman (1945): Ormen 9. Christian Kracht (2012): Imperium 10. Ovid (8): Metamorphoses, translated by professor Thea Selliaas Thorsen (the translation is just about 800 pages, with a long introduction, translator's notes, and a whole host of appendices) 11. Jon Fosse (2004): Det er Ales (Aliss at the fire) 12. Hanne Ørstavik (2020): Ti amo 13. Max Porter (2019): Lanny
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Feb 26, 2025 16:33
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Much slower month thanks to the release of Kingdom Come: Deliverance 2. Really astonishing game — but that's not what we're here for! I ended up dropping The Mayor of Casterbridge when I got a little bored and realised I was confusing it with Middlemarch anyway. I'm not discarding it, just putting it back on the shelf until the mood strikes. Ulvir's wildcard pick, The Moscoviad, is en route.
1. Set a goal for number of books or another personal challenge! 2. Make sure at least 25% of the books you read this year are not written by men. [27%] 3. Make sure a least 25% of the books you read this year are written by writers of colour. [7%] 4. Make sure at least 10% of the books you read this year are written by LGBTQ writers. [0-7%, there's a case for Montagu] 6. Read two books published in the same month. 7. Read a book by someone known better for making other art (music, sculpture, film, etc). 8. Read something told from a non-human point of view. 10. Read something that recently entered the public domain. 13. Participate in the TBB Book Of The Month thread! 14. Read something in verse.
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Feb 27, 2025 14:51
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February is over, so here's my update! This month's reading was a bit... all over the place, to say the least, although there are some reputable works of literature mixed in there. (Just ignore everything else.) 5. Death Comes for the Archbishop by Willa Cather Two French clerics try to re-establish the Catholic church in 19th century New Mexico. Took a while to click for me, but I think I went into this with the wrong expectations. Once I realised it was more of an episodic journey through the main character's entire lifespan, similar to Stoner or A Whole Life, then I was able to sit back and enjoy it a lot more. 6. Annie Bot by Sierra Greer Annie is a robot girlfriend for some dipshit named Doug. As she develops sentience, she begins to have mixed feelings about this situation. It's very Klara and the Large Adult Son. 7-10. Remnants #1-4 by K.A. Applegate I loved Animorphs as a kid so had to check out the thread in this very forum about one of Applegate's other series. Starts with the Earth getting blown up by an asteroid and then gets significantly weirder. After getting part of the way through the fifth book and reading about some kid slowly getting flayed alive by lasers while his weeping father begs an uncaring God for mercy, I think I hit the limits of my interest. Animorphs still slaps though 11. Save the Cat! Writes a Novel by Jessica Brody Baby's first narrative structure advice for aspiring writers, but I am baby and don't know what I'm doing. I read the original screenplay version of this book years ago, but still found this useful, especially the breakdowns of existing novels. 12. You, Again by Kate Goldbeck This month's fluffy romcom, heavily inspired by When Harry Met Sally. Did not recognise its origins until I took a closer look at the cover and realised I was looking at a white woman with brown hair in a bun and a man who looked suspiciously like Adam Driver. "You again" indeed, but such are the perils of reading contemporary romance these days. However I ended up really liking this. The relationship was cute and the character development felt earned. Never would have guessed the depressed chef was originally a Sith lord but there you go. 13. My Friends by Hisham Matar Three young Libyan men find themselves exiled in 1980s London. The book follows them as they try to make new lives for themselves and stretches several decades up to the impact of the Arab Spring. This was really interesting and I definitely want to read more of Matar's work. --- I finished Bury Your Gays by Chuck Tingle this morning, but as I didn't hit the end until March, I'll have to come back to that next time.
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Mar 1, 2025 10:27
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10) Dune by Frank Herbert - I have abortively started this and left it unfinished 3 or 4 times over the years. Could never get it to grab me where I really didn't want to put it down, and felt like picking it up whenever I had free time. Audiobooks + exercise was the key to cracking this for me. It excelled in audio format for some reason whereas reading the text was not great for me. I really enjoyed it, it has a wonderfully weird sense of worldbuilding and neat computer-free far future. Looking forward to getting into the stranger sequels and side-stories. Stuff like the Bene Gesserit and the Space Guild are quite compelling. 11) House of Hollow by Krystal Sutherland - What if there were some sisters so sexy and mysterious, that their mysterious sexy mystery was... supernatural? That's what this is. A mystery about some sexy changeling sisters. I thought this one was going to veer harder into the supernatural side of things, but that aspect of it is actually barely there. Felt like YA stuff. 12) Binti by Nnedi Okorafor - My least favorite Okorafor work thus far. Also felt like YA stuff, and was simplistic even for Okorafor's work. This time the economy of prose seemed lame and uninspired compared to something like Remote Control, in which it made the story feel urgent and tense. 13, 14, 15) The Malice, The Vagrant and the City, & The Seven by Peter Newman - The back half of the series that is What If Berserk but A Western Science Fantasy. This series starts off seeming like a dark fantasy, and by the end it's a full-blown world-spanning sci fi opera. This one goes downhill as the books proceed, but I had a great time with it. My earlier post likening this to Gene Wolf\Qud\Vance holds up, though it is not as good as those two authors' works. 16) A Psalm for the Wild-Built by Becky Chambers - Insultingly stupid and insipid. Dull world. Zero-dimensional characters. No conflict whatsoever. Child-like prose. Of the precisely 2 characters in this book, one is a non-stop whiner and the other is an exposition robot. Literally. This sucked an infinite amount of rear end, and the only reason I finished it was because it was so short. I'm sure someone likes this stuff. She's apparently are really brisk-selling author, but I do not see the appeal whatsoever. 17) The God of the Woods by Liz Moore - I was told that this was a Weird Fiction/Supernatural story. It is very much not that. It's a simple mystery story about kids that go missing, and an exploration of how being rich can dismantle a person's moral compass. I liked it for what it was, but I kept expecting things to get spooky/magical - because I was explicitly told that they would. Alas. 18) Alien: Prototype by Tim Waggoner - one more off the list of Alien universe media. getting close to 100% BOOKS: 18/45 UltraShame fucked around with this message at 03:08 on Mar 6, 2025 |
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Mar 1, 2025 11:59
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Previous post I decided to do two things I need to follow, but are strictly not a part of any challenge. Read as many Discworld books as I can fit in, with the goal of eventually rereading all of them, and read as many books off the Helsingin Sanomat Top 100 finnish books of the 2000s, with the goal of eventually reading all of them. To keep track of things, I'll be adding the following legend after my score, if any of them are relevant to the book. I also updated my previous post to reflect this. W: Non-male writer L: LGBTQ writer C: Writer of colour TP: Terry Pratchett T100: Helsingin Sanomat Top 100 list books With that done, here's february!
If anyone wants to hit me with a wildcard, I'm good to go.
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Mar 1, 2025 12:39
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Still on a roll! Another 9 books in February! I had a good time with basically all of these too, which is always nice. 10. Sea of Glory: America's Voyage of Discovery, the U.S. Exploring Expedition, 1838-1842 by Nathanial Philbrick What it says -- this is a pretty unknown expedition but they made a lot of impressive and interesting trips and studies despite how much of a horror the expedition leader, Charles Wilkes, was. This book was a constant stream of "WHAT? NO. WHAT?" events, you can just look up Wilkes' wiki page and see how ludicrous of a person he was. Also includes some extremely dangerous early volcanology! 11. The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier & Clay by Michael Chabon A friend recommended this to me and I'm really glad I read it. This one the Pulitzer and it was a good pick. It's historical fiction about a pair of Jewish cousins (once just barely escaping from Prague before the Nazis really got going) who become a comic book writing/illustrating team during the halcyon early days of the medium. There's a lot of care paid to the time period and the characters, and I guess this counts as 'literary.' It just really worked for me. 12. Little by Edward Carey Another historical fiction, this one was actually (sort of) about a real person: Marie Tussaud of waxworks fame. This definitely isn't close to 100% beholden to real events, but it covers her early life and the French Revolution. And while it's not terribly concerned with extreme accuracy, there are plenty of real people who show up with a lot of attention to detail (for example, famous painter Jacque-Louis David has a cameo and this book was how I learned he was not only friends with Marat but had a speech impediment from a facial tumor of some kind.) It also has a bunch of little diegetic illustrations which was fun. 13. Three Men in a Boat (To Say Nothing of the Dog) by Jerome K. Jerome My Wildcard -- this was really great! It was really funny in the parts that were funny, and the sort of maudlin parts were still interesting to see even if it felt like they sort of interrupted the light-hearted romp/observations of most of the rest of the book. There were also only two extremely brief instances of surprise racism which for a book published in 1889 is a lot less than I've come to expect. Montmorency (the dog) was also a delightful character. 14. The Deep by Rivers Solomon A short novella with an interesting background. It's a sort of collaboration with the band Clipping following their song "The Deep" which was itself an homage to the work by music duo Drexciya. This story is about a species of mermaids who trace their beginnings back to pregnant, enslaved African women who were thrown off of slave ships if they were sick or died on the way. As you might expect, there's a lot about generational traumas, as well as memory, history, and identity. A really short good read and the sort of gut-punch that Solomon always delivers. 15. Pilgrim: A Medieval Horror by Mitchell Lüthi A German crusader in occupied Jerusalem is finally ready to go home after paying off the extensive debts he owes to the church via his service. An acquaintance asks if he can bring a (stolen) holy relic of a saint's hand back with him, pitching it as a way he might get the soul of his unbaptized, dead child saved from hell. He sets off with a Muslim friend of his (he's the other main character) and things start to go very supernaturally wrong very quickly. I won't spoil much else, but if "Between Two Fires but it's the Levant and Greek/Arab/Muslim religious and folk traditions instead of just Christian ones" pitch sounds good, check it out (with the classic, nothing-is-quite-as-good-as-B2F caveat). 16. Out There Screaming edited by Jordan Peele This is a horror short story anthology edited by horror movie director and comedian Jordan Peele. This has a real all-star lineup of Black writers from across speculative fiction genres, so if you've been thinking you'd like to find some more good Black SFFH writers to read, just check out the table of contents here and pick some. Multi-author anthologies usually have at least a few stories that totally whiff for me, but this one managed to break the streak. Some stories might be a little weaker than others of course, but overall I thought this was super solid. 17. New Edge Sword & Sorcery #0 edited by Oliver Brackenbury This is a fairly new S&S magazine that has a completely free issue 0 available (and they're currently successfully crowdfunding for issues 5-7). New Edge aims to take all the fun and gnarly parts of S&S while leaving behind the genre's less-great conventions (like the sexism and racism). There is still a LOT of bone crunching, skin melting violence in this though! And some really interesting heroes, including two different pieces set in Mongolia-like settings. There are also some non-fiction essays and an interview included, along with a wealth of really fun illustrations. Check it out if it sounds fun, the first one is free after all! 18. The Flesh Inherent by Perry Meester Continuing the sort of pulp-y kick, this is a novella set in the backwaters of the western frontier during cowboy times. Something big falls from the sky outside of town and people who go to see it either come back changed or not at all. The story follows two men who go to investigate the thing that fell from the sky. This has some body horror, is very queer, and a really quick read (100 pages or so?). I really liked it! Especially the prose style -- the beginning quarter or so in particular read like a pulp detective novel in a very good way. 1. Set a goal for number of books or another personal challenge! 18/52 2. Make sure at least 25% of the books you read this year are not written by men. 6/18~ 3. Make sure a least 25% of the books you read this year are written by writers of colour. 5/18~ 4. Make sure at least 10% of the books you read this year are written by LGBTQ writers. 5/18~ 5. Read something fictional about a real person. -- Little 6. Read two books published in the same month. 7. Read a book by someone known better for making other art (music, sculpture, film, etc). 8. Read something told from a non-human point of view. 9. Read something with a mystery at its centre. -- Dehiscent 10. Read something that recently entered the public domain. -- Red Harvest 11. Read: something with a colon in the title. -- In The Kingdom of Ice 12. Ask someone in this thread for a Wildcard, and read it! -- Three Men In a Boat 13. Participate in the TBB Book Of The Month thread! -- Red Harvest 14. Read something in verse. 15. Read something with a high body count. -- The Daughters' War 16. Read something with a happy ending. Read at least 10 hardcopies I already own: 3/10
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Mar 1, 2025 18:43
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I don't have Booklord challenge stats yet, but as I've only read 11 books thus far it won't take long when I can actually use my laptop again.
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Mar 1, 2025 23:57
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Gertrude Perkins posted:
Turns out a job where I can listen to audiobooks while I work plus a long regular commute means just...a Lot of reading. I finished sixteen books in February. 7 - Towards A Gay Communism, by Mario Mieli (trans. by David Fernbach). This one is a real doozy. A snapshot of late-70s gay radicalism, Italian communist theory, and Mieli's own furious passion for justice. It's also full of segments that seem intended to shock the reader out of his complacency, which is great...apart from the lumping in of homophobia with taboos against incest and pederasty. It's an easy book to get frustrated with, but also fetures some truly excellent and vital polemics. Some chapters I will absolutely return to - the segment concerning the murder of Pasolini, for instance, is a fascinating picture of the state of Italian politics of the time. Parts of this book are bizarre and outdated, of course: written before Foucault's 'History of Sexuality', Mieli is thus heavily dependent on Marx and Freud for his analysis, which does limit the scope of the work. And of course the way he uses "transsexuality" is just...odd. But there are good things in here, and interesting threads to pull on for modern radical ideas. Shame about the other stuff though. It did at the very least entertain me, and made me want to explore more about mid-C20th Italian radicalism, communism, anarchism. 8 - I Wrote This Book Because I Love You: Essays, by Tim Kreider. Having been a fan of Kreider's cartoons and writing for a long time, sitting down to listen to him read this essay collection was a real treat. This book collects a number of pieces, heartfelt and self-effacing and full of different kinds of love and relationships. There's a sweet essay about his cat, a strange adventure of joining the circus, and a really interesting journey through Kreider's 2000s political activism. His writing is really engrossing and I found it really moved me. Very happy to have read this. 9 - Cemetery Drive, by Lucian Clark. Melodrama novella about a doomed relationship between a lonely queer everyman and a tragic trauma-femme. Lots of bingo card squares filled and definitely suffers from needing another editing pass, but definitely has some cool imagery and an earnest desperation about it that made it hard to dislike. The protagonist's descent into obsession could definitely have used more breathing room, but I got the impression that Clark wanted the story to wrap up quickly. It's not great, and it does feel a little unfinished, but I couldn't find myself disliking it. I hope to see more from Clark. 10 - Sid Meier's Memoir!: A Life In Computer Games, by Sid Meier & Jennifer Lee Noonan. This was fun and interesting and basically exactly what I had expected from a Sid Meier book. There are slices of his personal life and some good insight into his creative process, and while things never went particularly deep I still felt like I was learning about Meier and his approach to games and game design. There are some fun anecdotes and a lot of episodes from his early career, which paints an interesting picture of a time in the industry when computer games were still a strange and exciting new thing that the field was still working out what to do with. Thoroughly pleasant, I'm glad I checked this out. 11 - A Woman First: First Woman: A Memoir, by Selina Meyer, by Billy Kimball & David Mandel. This MUST be experienced as an audiobook. Read in-character by Julia Louis-Dreyfus as Selina Meyer, but also Tony Hale as her long-suffering assistant Gary. Their performances combine with the text for a really entertaining comedy series that for me, as a fan of Veep, was pitch-perfect. The book itself is of course a parody of self-serving political memoirs that ends up revealing far more about the subject than she wants or realises, including a bizarre Elektra complex and a litany of past traumas and horrible behaviour glossed over with overwritten folksy good humour. I don't know how appealing this would be to someone unfamiliar with the show, but I liked it a lot. 12 - Meaning Is Embarrassing: Conceptual Poetry by Noah Berlatsky. A short collection of poems and all-caps slogans, mostly little jokes and exhaustion-fueled shitposts and occasional cries for help. There's also an extended essay about memetic reactions to Henry Kissinger's death and another about conceptual art-as-politics. The poetry ranges from smirk-worthy to bland to totally ephemeral, though some of it would be entertaining to see read live by Berlatsky himself. And of course the trap of it being "conceptual poetry" means that me not enjoying half of it was probably part of the point. 13 - Memoirs of Extraordinary Popular Delusions and the Madness of Crowds, by Charles Mackay. For something written 170 years ago this is remarkably readable, comprehensive and interesting. Starting with economic bubbles and delusions about infinite profit, Mackay moves on to topics such as witch-hunts, alchemy, and the Crusades, to explore different mass obsessions in European culture. It seems very comprehensive, with a large amount of detail for each instance, especially when discussing the lives of "Alchymists" and witch trials, and it's interesting to see what parts of Mackay's own ideology filter into his histories. There is a recurring theme of illogic, of course, with him blaming these obsessions and delusions on a lack of rational thinking coupled with human greed. But he also has problems with the idea of someone reaching a higher rung of society "undeservingly", which is an interesting sentiment for a man writing in Scotland in the 1840s. I enjoyed this a lot, learned more than I expected, and will never forget the tenets and rituals of a Black Sabbath described herein. Hail Satan. 14 - Miracle of the Rose, by Jean Genet (trans. by Bernard Frechtman). Beautiful, yearning, exceptionally gay. Homosocial and -sexual drama and romance and violence among inmates in French prison and their younger selves in a youth prison colony. Clearly drawn heavily from Genet's own life, it's easy to get lost in how pretty and moving the language is. The overlapping worlds of incarcerated men and boys are brought vividly to life, and I was gripped throughout, even if I did lose track of finer details. Exceptional vibes. 15 - The Daugher of Doctor Moreau, by Silvia Moreno-Garcia. What a total waste of time. Moreno-Garcia seems completely unwilling to engage with any of the original Wells novel's themes, to the point of sanding off any rough edges and presenting a dull coming-of-age story set in the middle of nowhere in Yucatán. The only vaguely interesting parts are the occasional action scene, and Montgomery's grim inner monologues, but they're a silver lining on a big boring grey cloud. It doesn't help that Moreno-Garcia's prose is so boring and cliché-riddled. The novel feels like it was written as a highschool English assignment for an easy C+. This had such potential! A total disappointment barely worthy of these two paragraphs. 16 - Illuminations: Stories, by Alan Moore. Phenomenal collection of short/medium/long stories, ranging from "a conversation between two men attempting to escape justice on the eve of the year 1200" to "a surprisingly funny creation myth happening in the first femtosecond after the Big Bang" to "real estate agent gives the actual messiah the keys to his new house" to "a warts-and-all treatise on the entire US comics industry with only names changed, featuring some truly unforgettable episodes and bizarre broken people". The latter in particular feels like Moore's final word on comics as an art form, and it includes some vivid and hilarious and awful scenes. There are a couple of stories that didn't quite grip me, but even there the prose is gorgeous and deliberate. Really drat good and easy to recommend. 17 - Cuckoo, by Gretchen Felker-Martin. This had me hooked from the first page. Queer kids, summer camp, torture, abuse, fumbling self-discovery, incredible body horror, christofascism as an eldritch and malevolent entity. Felker-Martin thrives in writing terrible despair and physical threat, as well as complicated and dangerous relationships that feel, in part at least, informed by real experience. It was hard not to compare this to Chuck Tingle's 'Camp Damascus', given their similar premises, but this is much more bleak and desperate and has a much higher body count. This is a writer who thrives on exploring the limits and tolerances of the human body and mind. I couldn't put this book down, and I found several passages genuinely nauseating. But also Felker-Martin can write messy teen romance in ways that I found relatable and moving. She's good at this! And this is a hell of a book. 18 - How Europe Underdeveloped Africa, by Walter Rodney. Having read chunks of this here and there over the years, actually going through the whole book cover to cover was even more interesting. A comprehensive history of African society and culture, with a distinctly Marxist perspective that emphasises dialectical analysis and informs Rodney's ideas of history and "development". Much of this book is spent debunking colonialist narratives - that colonisation was "good for Africa", that African peoples are "primitive" and the like - and Rodney does so with a huge array of research and pointed criticism. There are also a number of cases to demonstrate how every facet of life for African peoples - political, cultural, dietary, economic - was disrupted and damaged by European colonisation. It is very easy to see how this became such a foundational text in the half-century since its publication. 19 - All Down Darkness Wide, by Seán Hewitt. Exceptionally moving and very downbeat memoir of love, loss, queer identity and mental health misery. Hewitt's prose is beautiful, as one might expect from a poet, and he dives deep into his emotions with a real flourish. There are some scenes here that were very uncomfortable in how similar they were to my own experiences, to the point where I started having vivid flashbacks. If you want to have your heart blasted by stories of lapsed Christianity, queer becoming, and threats of suicide, then this is the book for you!!!!!!!!! 20 - The Terminal Beach, by JG Ballard. A pretty good short story collection, exploring themes such as overpopulation, cultural knock-on effects from the Space Race, and the totalising shadow of nuclear threat. The standout entry here, 'End Game', is a small but intensely good story about a man being imprisoned for supposed crimes against the state, living with his live-in guard and executioner. It's really good and worth picking up this collection on its own. Of course, these are stories from the early 60s, and some old-timey British colonial attitudes abound here, but it actually helps sell some of the unease to see stuffy English names and language juxtaposed with the creeping dread and strangeness. Ballard good. 21 - The Haar, by David Sodergren. Grisly and downbeat horror story set in a remote Scottish town under threat from an evil billionaire land developer. Our heroine, an 84-year-old woman and one of the last holdouts against rapacious capitalism, meets a washed-up sea monster. What transpires is a mashup of a number of horror tropes that doesn't quite escape the gravity of its influences. Some really nasty deaths and a satisfying ending did help though. Interstingly enough there is an afterword written by Sodergren's late grandmother, to illustrate what life was like growing up for a woman of that generation in rural Scotland. I enjoyed this book, a quick and yucky dose of horror, but I don't know if I could rate it higher. 22 - When The Earth Was Green: Plants, Animals, and Evolution's Greatest Romance, by Riley Black. Having adored Black's previous book, this was a day-one read for me. As with its predecessor, this is a paleontology book structured like a series of Walking With Dinosaurs, which each chapter seeing her paint an engrossing snapshot of nature at different points in prehistory. Instead of Dinosaurs, it's Plants we're walking with this time, through exploring the relationships between plants and animals across the last billion years of evolution. And Black does a good job of bringing the scenes to life, while acknowledging how hard it is to imagine the phenomenology of being a plant. There are sections where it was clear that she still found it hard not to focus on the "charismatic megafauna", though, such as the chapter where prehistoric felines get silly on ancient catnip, or the brief returns to dinosaur times. I would have liked this to be even longer, and to explore a wider range of plant-animal relationships, but this was still very satisfying and all-round cosy. What's all that done to the challenge progress? 1. Set a goal for number of books: 22/52 2. Make sure at least 25% of the books you read this year are not written by men. - 7 - 2, 5, 6, 9, 15, 17, 22 3. Make sure a least 25% of the books you read this year are written by writers of colour. - 5 - 3, 5, 6, 15, 18 4. Make sure at least 10% of the books you read this year are written by LGBTQ writers. - 9 - 2, 3, 6, 7, 9, 14, 17, 19, 22 7. Read a book by someone known better for making other art (music, sculpture, film, etc). 9. Read something with a mystery at its centre. 12. Ask someone in this thread for a Wildcard, and read it! 14. Read something in verse. 16. Read something with a happy ending. Gertrude Perkins fucked around with this message at 06:19 on Mar 2, 2025 |
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Mar 2, 2025 06:12
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8one6 posted:January Update: 9. Neuromancer by William Gibson ( it's on basically every scifi and cyberpunk must read list so counts as a classic) The pages drip with style the same way a cheeseburger wrapper drips with grease. I liked it but if I'm being honest I liked Snow Crash more. 10. Saturn's Children by Charles Stross Ultimately I just found it boring. Maybe Stross just isn't for me. This is the second one of his books I've read and I found both to be slogs. 11 - 14. The Portal in the Forest series by Matt Dymerski They start out as horror, turn into scifi, and kind of finish as a save the multiverse action romp. It was fun for the most part and was engaging for the entire series. 15. You Are Summoned by Dean Henegar A LitRPG isekai series with the twist that main character is summoned to whatever fantasy world as semi-random fodder and then returned to Earth. There's an Earth-based conspiracy trying to capture summoned people for nefarious reasons. The back half is a little slow since it's an extended fantasy mech war campaign. 16. Derelict: Marines by Paul Elard Cooley This is a dull mix of interchangeable characters and redundant mission briefings for about 75% of its page count, and the remaining 25% isn't interesting enough to bother moving on to the next book in the series. 17. Slime Keeper by Leon West A cozy isekai harem LitRPG in a setting inspired by games like Stardew Valley. It's fine. Broadly pleasant characters in a mostly low stakes setting. 18 -21. The Hero Game series 1 - 4 by August Aird A fast paced superhero origin story with a LitRPG twist. I enjoy seeing what kind of store brand superheroes authors come up with since all of the good names have been taken over the last 100 years. I like the characters and the setup of a cosmic alien gamifying a new hero's increase in abilities because the first time she gave someone powers sort of hosed it up by offering too much too quickly was a novel way to explain the LitRPG stuff and why no one else gains power that way. 22. Bearing Gifts by Sean Fenian Easily the worst thing I read in February. The pacing is awful, with chapters dedicated to insignificant details and the most minor details of things like clothing fabrication onboard the spaceship. The politics are laughably childish, with political leaders that would be too simplistic for children's cartoons. The book goes over the same plot point over and over and over again. The main character is an obvious author insert but somehow in a book where aliens choose him to be in control of everything the author can't even manage a compelling wish fulfillment fantasy.
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Mar 2, 2025 09:52
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I'm only a little late for February. Not really focusing on the challenges. I'm sure I'll get there. 9. Dead Cat Tail Assassins by P Djeli Clark - A zombie assassin is hired to for a very unusual kill. How? Why? This is fairly short, but solid. I liked it, it was fun. 10. A Sorceress Comes to Call by T Kingfisher - Cordelia's mom is a sorceress who preys on men and abuses Cordelia. Her mom has her sights set on the squire with a nice estate. As her mom makes the move, Cordelia really comes to like the inhabitants of the estate. Can the work together to stop the wicked sorceress? Solid read, as we've come to expect from Kingfisher. Saw it mentioned as a best of from '24. I'm not sure it gets there, but it's certainly worth a go. 11. Rosarita by Anita Desai - Bonita is told by a stranger in Mexico that she knew her mother. Curious, Bonita tries to learn of her mother's possible connection to Mexico. This is short and meandering and just sorta there. 12. The Cat in the City by Nick Bradley - Linked stories set in Tokyo. Lots of city. Not enough cat. So many seedy and unpleasant characters. Meh. 13. Glorious Exploits by Ferdia Lennon - During the Peloponnesian war, a group of Athenians was held captive in a quarry in Syracuse. This historical fiction seizes on that. Two unemployed potters, worried that Athenian's loss might lead to their destruction and therefor the possible loss of Euripides plays, coax the prisoners into performing Euripides in the quarry for the people of Syracuse. This I saw mentioned as a Best of '24 and it absolutely deserves it. Funny, moving, a compelling story about theater and art and all. It's great. And maybe the best book cover ever. 14. The Family Izquierdo by Ruben Degollado - A set of linked short stories about the Izquierdo family, from crossing the Rio Grande in McAllen, to setting up a successful business, and on through a few generations. It is sort of a sprawling family epic, but moves through the families and generations story by story. I was sort of mid on this, and then after spending time with the Izquierdos the stories towards the end hit real hard. I did really like this. It's got a distinct sense of time and place which I enjoy. And it'll make you want to listen to Selena. 15. Alter Ego by Alex Segura - Comic books, mysteries, murders, alcoholism, girl power. This didn't quite feel like it knew what to do with itself. Meh. Ben Nevis posted:1. Catalina by Karla Cornejo Villavicencio
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Mar 5, 2025 03:51
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Didn't post in Feb as I spent the whole month reading Wind of Truth (which I only finished last week) but last month I managed to read 2 books. Mouth by Joshua Hull - A random pickup from my local bookshop. I thought of it as an adult goosebumps book by which I mean a fun story but with added language and gore. I thought the ending was pretty cute. Cold Dead Cosplay by Fiona Angwin - Fiona was a regular attendee/ performer at a small scifi convention I go to. This book was very much a love letter to that convention being set there with other regulars name dropped (or heavily implied). I'd have liked to have met Fiona.
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Mar 12, 2025 17:54
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Is it too late to get in on this? Name: McSpankwich Personal Challenge: 50 books, 40 from the library Booklord 2025? Yes I'm at 18 books so far, I'll crosspost my log from Goodreads later tonight.
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Mar 15, 2025 13:39
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Not too late at all! Welcome to the party!
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Mar 15, 2025 19:01
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Alright sweet. I have some questions, though; I will put them where they are relevant. I am slightly ashamed I started the year on such a Sando binge, but here we are, I guess. 1. Oathbringer - Brandon Sanderson 2. Secret History - Brandon Sanderson 3. Acanum Unbounded - Brandon Sanderson 4. Edgedancer - Brandon Sanderson 5. Red Harvest - Dashiell Hammett 6. White Sand Volume 1 - Brandon Sanderson 7. White Sand Volume 2 - Brandon Sanderson 8. White Sand Volume 3 - Brandon Sanderson 9. Dawnshard - Brandon Sanderson 10. The Indian How Book - Arthur C. Parker 11. The Alloy of Law - Brandon Sanderson 12. Under the Volcano - Malcolm Lowry 13. Good Energy: The Surprising Connection Between Metabolism and Limitless Health - Casey Means 14. The Parable of the Sower - Octavia Butler 15. The Berry Pickers - Amanda Peters 16. Fourth Wing - Rebecca Yarros 17. Even Cowgirls Get the Blues - Tom Robbins 18. The Parable of the Talents - Octavia Butler BOOKLORD 2025 CHALLENGE 1. Set a goal for number of books or another personal challenge! 18/50 (Library Count: 18) 2. Make sure at least 25% of the books you read this year are not written by men. 5/13 3. Make sure a least 25% of the books you read this year are written by writers of color. 2/13 4. Make sure at least 10% of the books you read this year are written by LGBTQ writers. ??/5 5. Read something fictional about a real person. 6. Read two books published in the same month. 7. Read a book by someone known better for making other art (music, sculpture, film, etc). 8. Read something told from a non-human point of view. 9. Read something with a mystery at its centre. - Berry Pickers, Red Harvest 10. Read something that recently entered the public domain. - Red Harvest 11. Read: something with a colon in the title- Good Energy 12. Ask someone in this thread for a Wildcard, and read it! - I need one of these 13. Participate in the TBB Book Of The Month thread! - Red Harvest, Under the Volcano, Even Cowgirls Get the Blues 14. Read something in verse. 15. Read something with a high body count. - Is this literal? Like Red Harvest, or figurative.. like Fourth Wing 16. Read something with a happy ending. McSpankWich fucked around with this message at 01:30 on Mar 16, 2025 |
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Mar 16, 2025 00:49
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