March 2010 Reading

[gyrehead]

Gyrehead, do you have some sort of strategy that helps you read so much? Do you skim? I'm insanely envious of people that can read half of what you manage in a month.

Well last year, due to work I was on a plane 183 days if I did my math correctly for taxes. Company pays first class. I don't sleep on planes. So it's either gain fifty pounds eating or reading. So I read. I'm a pretty fast reader and a quiet flight makes for very focused absorbed reading. I also get quite a few arcs and promotional copies. This puts a nice little edge of pressure which I enjoy even if I'm still just reading for myself.

Not to make an issue of it, but actually two quite long flights the middle of the month resulted in about a third of that list being read. Super bowl, Olympics and Carnival actually cut into my reading quite a bit. Plus a nice long ski trip.

But the start of the year is usually pretty dense in reading since I tend to get arcs in one huge drop right after Christmas. Quantity will drop off as weather gets warmer. So far the first quarter has been full of smaller books; the big sprawling reads have yet to come my way.

If posting what I read is going to make people silly, I can stop. Posting. It's kind of silly for someone else to focus on what and how much I'm reading instead of just reading what and when they can. If I only read one book due to whatever circumstances, I'd be happy for the one. But I'm a fucking little pollyanna if I've got a book in my hand.

[BookWyrm]

Just finished Sir Gawain & the Green Knight, translation by Simon Armitage. It's a very nice story and it was a different experience for me to have it mediated via poetry. Overall its a compact Arthurian adventure that's aged very well thanks to Armitage's wonderful translation. The original text is also available next to the modern translation which was cool. I recommend it! You could read it in a day...

Now it's back to One Hundred Years of Solitude, as well as I suspect something new tonight, I want to pace myself with Márquez and burn some ADD energy blowing through another book.

Oh, I dunno. Some people can do it. I certainly can, at least within a reasonable degree. Asking me a blow-by-blow description of a minor scene might be pushing matters, but I do end up writing reviews of books I read weeks before (and 20-30 books later). Then again, several of the books I read are under 300 pages (which is a reasonable number; epic fantasy fans might disagree :P), so that might help matters. Then again, I've read hundreds of short stories this year and if you expect a detail summary of each, I might end up shoving a piece of rusty barbed wire up a particular orifice! :P

Modesty. Can't you read somewhere around 700 books a month? I'm going to start monitoring your blog and figure out your monthly mean.

Well last year, due to work I was on a plane 183 days if I did my math correctly for taxes. Company pays first class. I don't sleep on planes. So it's either gain fifty pounds eating or reading. So I read. I'm a pretty fast reader and a quiet flight makes for very focused absorbed reading. I also get quite a few arcs and promotional copies. This puts a nice little edge of pressure which I enjoy even if I'm still just reading for myself.

Interesting. I'm possibly going to have a month spent in an isolation chamber of sorts for a medical research study, and I've got a feeling it'll have the same affect on me as plane rides do you. ;)

*Update* Just read the first chapter in Dracula, and I'm going to continue the book.

[Gormenghast]

I am about done with Crack'd Pot Trail, and about done with the Everest (Infinite Jest).

Past the half with The Dragon Reborn (which I find very bad compared with The Great Hunt) and some other left behind at various points. I need to catch up.

P.S.

You can laugh at huge epic fantasy books, but you won't laugh as much when faced with: Infinite Jest, The Bleak House and The Recognitions.

THOSE ARE EPICS!

[beniowa]

I finished Servant of the Underworld by Aliette de Bodard. It's a murder mystery with magic set in Tenochtitlan in 1480. A priestess is abducted and Acatl, the High Priest of the Dead, is tasked to find her. He has a personal stake in it as well because the main suspect is his brother. I liked that the author did something different by using a mystery rather than just filling her story with Aztec religion and politics. De Bodard also added magic by making Aztec rituals and gods real. One drawback is that the writing is pretty average, but it's not bad if you consider that English is the author's second language. There are a few other weaknesses, namely that the author doesn't know how to write fight scenes, but on the whole the book is quite good. A very solid debut novel for de Bodard.

Next up will be Seeds of Earth by Michael Cobley before I get into KJ Parker's The Folding Knife.

[Quarterman]

Finished Stephen King's Firestarter. Great characterization. You can very easily sympathize with King's protagonists. While the premise is interesting, there wasn't a whole lot going on.

I agree, I thought it was okay at best but then again I was also abit bias about the book, I am not that big on books about shadow governments and human weapons. Which were a trend both in literature and film during the time Firestarter was published. Horror novelist John Farris beat im to it with The Fury by a few years.

Firestarter had the vintage classic King style but the premise and story weren't all there for me personally.

[Quarterman]

*Update* Just read the first chapter in Dracula, and I'm going to continue the book.

Awesome! *congratulatory applause*

Dracula has its warts but they're few and far between, this is my all time favorite novel, Bram Stoker really laid down the law with that book. I love this classic Victorian horror novel. Stoker never could repeat it's success both in quality and popularity.

[BookWyrm]

Awesome! *congratulatory applause*

Dracula has its warts but they're few and far between, this is my all time favorite novel, Bram Stoker really laid down the law with that book. I love this classic Victorian horror novel. Stoker never could repeat it's success both in quality and popularity.

Yes, I'm reading a wonderful rendition with illustrations by Ben Templesmith. Meshed with a free audiobook on librivox, it's a really cozy read. As cozy as an excellent horror novel can be of course...

Honestly I'm sort of taken aback at how much I'm enjoying it so far, I know the story well from previous movies I've watched, and lets face it, who's not familiar with Dracula? It seems like such a culturally integrated story (think Halloween-time) that to think the original book held plenty of surprises still is a surprise.

[Quarterman]

Yes, I'm reading a wonderful rendition with illustrations by Ben Templesmith. Meshed with a free audiobook on librivox, it's a really cozy read. As cozy as an excellent horror novel can be of course...

Honestly I'm sort of taken aback at how much I'm enjoying it so far, I know the story well from previous movies I've watched, and lets face it, who's not familiar with Dracula? It seems like such a culturally integrated story (think Halloween-time) that to think the original book held plenty of surprises still is a surprise.

Yes, through cinema Dracula became such a huge pop icon, tho none of these adaptations really are truly faithful to the book. IMO, Dracula should be required reading, it is truly one bad mutha of a horror story. It resonates quite strongly almost like it is thee genesis of literary horror tho that is a preposterous statement in of itself but that is the resonance it gives off.

EDIT: Try The Island of Dr Moreau/The Invisible Man by H.G. Wells and 20,000 Leagues Under The Sea by Jules Verne. The two former are just over 100 pages and be warned 20KLUTS is not the young adult book people think.

[Max the Mostly Mediocre]

Yukikaze by Kambayashi: Not really sure how to describe this. Weak dialogue, but for some reason I didn't really care. The characters didn't--for the most part, although I was quite taken with the snow plow driver--do much for me, but for some reason I didn't really care. It's a little strange, and a little pretentious, and a little heavy handed, and I liked it. Not sure how much I liked it, and I'm not sure I'd actually recommend it to anyone, but I'm glad I read it.

[BookWyrm]

Yes, through cinema Dracula became such a huge pop icon, tho none of these adaptations really are truly faithful to the book. IMO, Dracula should be required reading, it is truly one bad mutha of a horror story. It resonates quite strongly almost like it is thee genesis of literary horror tho that is a preposterous statement in of itself but that is the resonance it gives off.

EDIT: Try The Island of Dr Moreau/The Invisible Man by H.G. Wells and 20,000 Leagues Under The Sea by Jules Verne. The two former are just over 100 pages and be warned 20KLUTS is not the young adult book people think.

Thanks for the recs! I've been meaning to read those Wells books because, believe it or not, I've never read the guy. I've actually got that Verne story sitting around my room somewhere, I just haven't quite gotten there yet. I suppose I should clean my room as I read the books I pick up off the floor and eventually that would bring my sweet Verne back to me.

[Uruk-hai]

Opened up Peter Straub's A Dark Matter last night. I'm only about 30 pages in, but it looks like it's gonna be a good one.

Straub drives me crazy sometimes: he tends to get a little too......metaphysical, I guess, and that kind of bores me. He also has some weird sentence structures - multiple, multiple commas and semicolons and I sometimes have to read a passage two or three times to get what he's trying to say.

That being said, he's a really good writer & has good ideas so I'm looking forward to getting into this one.

Behind that, I've got Joe Hill's Horns, Dan Simmons' Black Hills, and Gene Wolfe's New Sun books. That ought to get me through the summer.

[akh]

Cioran's "On the Heights of Despair". Probably "A Short History of Decay" too.

Also finishing KJ Parker's Scavenger trilogy.

[Cuchulain]

I've just finished China Miéville's The Scar. It's original, interesting, well-written, epic, and just all-around good. Oh, and the novel contains a warrior of superlative badassness: Uther Doul, Possible Sword, 'nuff said. The man actually reminded me of Kellhus at times, with the difference that he's a lot less annoying than that manipulative prick.

I'm still reading Ulysses and I'm still interested, despite the snail's pace at which I'm going through it.

[Guinevere Seaworth]

I finished Malcolm Gladwell's What the Dog Saw. There is a whole slew of fascinating and yet completely unrelated topics in there. I really enjoyed reading it.

I decided to get up to speed on some of the "contemporary classics" of fantasy, so I've started The Riddle-Master of Hed by Patricia McKillip.

[Ratatoskr]

I decided to get up to speed on some of the "contemporary classics" of fantasy, so I've started The Riddle-Master of Hed by Patricia McKillip.

Ha! My absolute favourite when I grew up. Read it once a year from age eleven to my early twenties and discovered something new every time. Be sure to report how you liked it!

[gladius]

I'm reading A fortress of gray ice and skipping entire chapters. The best old POVs have only a few chapters and do almost nothing and most of the new are disappointing. Some have become unreadable (Raif :worried:), others bore me to tears (Effie). I should have stopped after the first, but it's too late to give up now.

[lotuspixie]

I've been blowing through Stephen King's Dark Tower series, and I'm currently half-way through The Waste Lands. As a kid, I read a hell of a lot of King. How did I miss this series all these years?! So far it's fantastic, I'm absolutely loving it. I'm especially eating up all the

Spoiler

time travel/alt universe

stuff. I've heard the later books aren't as good, but we'll see.

I may have to scrounge up a copy of Wizard and Glass by the end of this weekend

Isn't finding a new, great book just fantastic? I mean, most books are at least OK, but finding one that really hooks you? :)

[arya_underfoot]

over a year after buying it, i hope to finally read daniel abraham's Shadow and Betrayal. i've heard great things about it...

[Max the Mostly Mediocre]

Bone Crossed by Patricia Briggs, mostly solid, but sexual healing? Seriously?

Christ.

[Quarterman]

Thanks for the recs! I've been meaning to read those Wells books because, believe it or not, I've never read the guy. I've actually got that Verne story sitting around my room somewhere, I just haven't quite gotten there yet. I suppose I should clean my room as I read the books I pick up off the floor and eventually that would bring my sweet Verne back to me.

Yes, 20KLUTS is the only story I've read from Verne that I have enjoyed. I don't love Verne much because he is far too descriptive and didactic for me. He goes on and on and on. But this story is absolutely awesome, very thrilling and captivating.

All three books I recommend with great urgency. Likewise, I felt The Time Machine and War of the Worlds were dull and plodding unlike the two titles previously mentioned.

Gave up on Desperation thus The Regulators too, what crap! Picked up Dance of the Dwarves by Geoffrey Household and loving it. I will pick up King again afterwards with another title.