December 2010 Reading Thread

[Starkess]

Finished The Sign of Four. It was pretty good, and I had less issues with the way the backstory was presented. I think it worked better because it was being narrated by the convict instead of just randomly dumping you back several years and thousands of miles with no warning. I liked Watson and Mary's romance, but seriously, it was like 2 days and they got engaged. Good to see ridiculous romcom tropes have a firmly rooted history!

Think I'm going to read Persuasion next. I really like Jane Austen, but I started this one a few weeks ago and just didn't get into it.

[chollman]

Finally gave up on The Sword of Shannara after about 300 pages. Completely one-dimensional, story I don't give a rats ass about, characters with absolutely no motivation or anything remotely interesting or engaging about them. Everything felt too half-assed and cheap. And absolutely everything had to be some over-the-top fantastical creation. Way too bland, boring, and bloated.

Instead, I just started Hunter's Run and in the first 15 pages, I am more hooked and engaged with the story, world, and characters than the first 300 of Shannara.

[Fiddler's Green]

Just finished Half-Made World and The Black Prism this weekend. The former was fantastic, I can't wait for the sequel. The latter was entertaining and fast paced, good mindless diversion.

Currently reading the middle book in John Norwich Byzantium history trilogy

[Nearly Headless Ned]

Finished King Rat by China Mieville. Pretty good, the prose is occasionally excellent and it has a straitfoward narrative and energy that makes it a compulsive read. However its teeth achingly hip 90's dance music references are unintentionally hilarious and do date it somewhat.

Am now starting on Jordans Tower of Midnight.

[Guinevere Seaworth]

Blasted through The Voyage of the Dawn Treader by C.S. Lewis as I wanted to read it before watching the movie. I am still working my way through Sense and Sensibility by Jane Austen. I'm curious to see where the story is going, but I'm finding I can't read big chunks at a time.

[Bellis]

I'm re-reading Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance. The first time around, I was quite young, and enjoyed it for the frame story. This time, I'm appreciating the philosophy more. I think after ten+ years working in science I'm about ready for some "post-rationalism".

[Cuchulain]

Finished Iain Banks's The Player of Games and I'm once again left impressed. While the novel lacks the scope of Consider Phlebas, it's equally great in its own way. At this rate, the Culture series is quickly becoming one of my sf favourites.

[nickg]

Just started Blood Meridian by Cormac McCarthy. Pretty much was hooked as soon as I opened it. I have only read one other book from him ( The Road ) and I'm not sure why it has taken me so long to pick this up. I can't say enough about his writing. Almost hypnotic.

[mashiara]

A little while ago I finished The Woman in White by Wilkie Collins. It took me a while to start liking it and enjoying it but once I got past the first 100 pages it was a really good read. I'd say it's probably one of the first detective/mystery books and for something that was written in 1860 it was really satisfying.

I also read The Chocolate Lover's club by Carole Matthews. Um... it almost put me off chocolate. Not well written, just one stereotype after another.

Another book I read was Souel, by Ionna Karystiani, one of the most interesting modern Greek authors. Her books are always full of complicated images and words but they are always so powerful and impressive I was glad I picked it out. I think that was the only book by a Greek author I read in 2010, I should really do differently next year.

And finally, The Strain, by Guillermo DelToro and Chuck Hogan. I had a lot of expectations from this book and I could feel them being lowered after every second page. It started out intriguingly enough but by the time I hit the one third mark it was all very predictable and felt familiar. There was no character development to speak off and while the plot had some bright spots I still didn't enjoy this as much as I thought I would. I'm glad I found it in the library instead of buying it.

I'm about to start Kill your Friends by John Niven, after seeing how much Isis -and Peadar- liked it.

[Datepalm]

 Finished Surface Detail (engaging, but lacking the emotional center of other culture books i've read. Very final mini-twist was a bit of a doozy though) and Charlie Yu's How To Live Safely in a Science Fictional Universe, which was neat, though its really more of a streched out short story, since theres not really a plot. (And I sorta kinda understood the calculus references! first time "for every delta there exists an epsilon..." has made me burst out laughing on the bus.)  

Just started The Windup Girl. 

[Teng Ai Hui]

I'm half-way through Before They Are Hanged. Also, I just started reading The Game by Neil Strauss.

[Analu]

I've had "Cloud Atlas" and "To Say Nothing of the Dog" on my shelf for over 5 years, and finally got around to reading them.

"Cloud Atlas": I was convinced it was the most brilliant book I've ever read all the way up until the Sloosha's Crossing section, then my interest plummeted. I don't know if he was genuinely going for a pidgin accent or if he was just parodying it, but it was godawful and almost impossible to read: like some strange mix of Hawaiian pidgin and a southern accent. Once I got thru that section though, it got good again, but I kinda thought all the narratives would neatly intersect at the end.

"To Say Nothing of the Dog": Very funny, interesting book. Made me google/wiki a bunch of things after reading it, such as what a "naiad" is, what "nacreous ryunkin" means, the Battle of Waterloo, what a bird's stump looks like, etc. The book used the same time-travel setting as "Doomsday Book", which was amusing to me because the two books couldn't be any more different. DB was just about the grimmest book I've ever read. I was still half-hoping that Kivrin would make an appearance, though.

[Cuchulain]

Finished Michael Chabon's Gentlemen of the Road, a loving tribute to classic adventure fiction and sword and sorcery (with the duo of protagonists being an obvious reference to Fafhrd and the Gray Mouser). The novel is written in a highly stylized, polite, and sophisticated (gentlemanly) language, which, combined with the subect matter, often makes for some very entertaining reading. GotR came as a pleasant surprise to me after being disappointed earlier by one of Chabon's other forrays into genre fiction (The Final Solution).

[beniowa]

Instead of the Valente book, I read Small Gods by Terry Pratchett. I needed a book to help me out of my reading funk and this one did the trick. Probably my favorite Discworld book so far along with Guards! Guards!.

Now I'm back to Valente with The Habitation of the Blessed.

I also read The Chocolate Lover's club by Carole Matthews. Um... it almost put me off chocolate. Not well written, just one stereotype after another.

Dang. I'll definitely be avoiding this one.

[Guinevere Seaworth]

It took me a while to finish Jane Austen's Sense and Sensibility. It wasn't bad at all, but I needed to be in the right mood to read it. I actually wanted to know who was marrying who. It felt a "gossipy" book to me, with people making assumptions (often wrong) about situations and people's character. I'm not sure if this was meant to be a satire or in deadly earnest. It was my first Austen novel, and I'm not sure if I'll be picking up more Austen novels in the future.

Up next is Michael Sullivan's The Crown Conspiracy.