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Aug. 30th, 2017 02:34 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
the_rckAdichie, Chimamanda Ngozi. We Should All Be Feminists - This is very short, more a pamphlet than a book really, that contains the text of a TED talk given by the author in 2012. I read it in under twenty minutes. It's also very basic in its view of intersectionality. Race and class are mentioned briefly in the context of men trying to use them to derail the conversation. The author says that those matter but that they don’t mean that discrimination against women isn’t important. My difficulty is that there’s no reference to anyone who isn’t cis and heterosexual. I found it interesting, though, to see the situation of feminist issues in Nigeria which is not a place I know a vast amount about.
astolat. Moving On - Clark/Lex fic drawing on Smallville and on JL/JLU canon. 19K words. Lex Luthor conquers the galaxy. I laughed at least once. The fic on AO3.
Atherton, Nancy. Aunt Dimity & the Widow’s Curse - One of Lori’s elderly neighbors confesses to murder when she and Lori are alone at a quilting bee, so Lori sets out to find out the truth of the matter. Mostly this involves visiting another village and talking to people who remember when, and the question of murder or not isn’t actually a mystery.
Brennan, Marie. Cold-Forged Flame - I'd already read the book after this one, so I thought I knew what would be here. I was right about some of that, but this book covers a much briefer bit of time than I expected. There's a rather substantial gap between the two books where much of the backstory goes. That may be why I wasn't completely lost, starting with that one. I liked this book a good bit.
canis_m. Wet Spell - 10K words Spirited Away fic. It’s tagged as Mature, but I’d call it explicit. Grown up Chihiro and Haku stay at Zeniba’s house while she’s away. They’re glad of the privacy which they simply can’t get when Haku visits Chihiro in the mortal world. It’s mostly sex and relationship stuff (established relationship without angst). Everything’s fairly fluffy. The story on AO3.
Case Closed 40-42 - Actual story arc developments! Yea! I had stopped expecting them a long time back. My suspicion is that I won’t get more for a while. Maybe I’m wrong? I’m still moving slowly forward and will as long as I can find libraries in the MelCat system that have whatever volume I need next.
Cici 1-2 - These are very short graphic novels aimed, by my estimation, at the seven to ten year old cohort. The main character discovers that she's a fairy and has one day to decide whether or not to remain one. She's having a hard time because her father has moved out and her best friend is changing. If either volume broke fifty pages, I'd be surprised. Cici makes ten year old typical bad decisions that I couldn't have dealt with in larger doses. The most immediate bit of magic is that Cici starts seeing people with animal features.
DarkAuroran. What Otter Nonsense - 21K words Naruto fic with Iruka/Kakashi endgame. Kakashi brings home an orphaned otter and leaves it with Iruka while he goes on a mission. By the time Kakashi gets back, the otter has bonded with Iruka who attempts to raise it for eventual release. There’s a good bit of humor. The fic on AO3.
Espada, Martin. The Republic of Poetry - This is a very short book. I’m not sure I could have finished it if it had been longer because the poems are full of the pain of relatively recent history. In the first section, Espada talks a lot about the horrors of the Pinochet years in Chile. He’s very good at finding the small details that fit together into a potent mosaic. I don’t think it’s something to read if you’re stressed or upset already, but the poems work very well. The poems in the second and third sections are more individual but again fit together to make an image. A number of the poems are dedicated to specific poets and to political prisoners and martyrs.
gin007. The Book of the Dead - Babylon 5 fanfic, almost 78K words. This is about what happens to Londo after his death. The first section, his journey toward judgment, is really well done and made me wipe my eyes more than once. The shorter bit in the middle doesn’t work quite so IMO, but I think the author hit a knot in terms of being able to get from the first bit to the equally long end section and needed that middle bit to make that third section metaphysically plausible. The last section worked for me, too. It wasn’t as powerful as the first section and went more in the direction of ‘how do we fix all the things?’ and was correspondingly fluffier. Basically, if you read it, don’t stop at the bit in the middle. The story on AO3.
Jayne, Samantha. Quarter Life Poetry: Poems for the Young, Broke & Hangry - This is a very, very fast read. Each page has an illustration and a four line, rhymed poem talking about life as a single, unemployed/under employed college graduate. Some of them made me chuckle, but I’m well outside of the target demographic.
Kim Unsong. Poems of Modern Sijo - I think, looking at the cover flaps and the forewords, that these poems were written in English, using the Sijo forms, rather than translated from Korean to English, but I’m not 100% certain. My impression is that, if they were translated, the work was done by the author. I’m not sure I appreciated these properly because I kept getting stuck on grammar and because I, at least occasionally, disagreed with the bits of message I thought I understood. The book came out in 1995, and it mentions President Clinton so the publication must have been close to the writing. I think that this poems would read better for someone either more comfortable with free verse or someone with a broader knowledge of Sijo (I have zero knowledge). I’m getting books of poetry out of the library based more on length than anything else because, even if I’m not hugely into a particular poet’s work, I may still manage to finish a 200 page book when I’d not manage 200 pages of something much longer.
LullabyKnell. Team Iruka vs. Paperwork - Naruto WIP. I don’t care that this isn’t done yet. It made me cackle a couple of times, and Scott wanted to know what was so funny. The ninjas of Konoha have been getting drunkenly married for many many years in the belief that the particular ceremonies weren’t valid/binding. Some of them have made dozens of joke marriages. Then, while trying to clean up the bureaucracy, Iruka and his team discover that all of those marriages are legal and binding. Simultaneously legal and binding. Different characters react differently, and it’s a huge mess. But funny. So very funny,
Fic on AO3.
Natsume’s Book of Friends 8-10 - I’m still enjoying this series. I’m concerned that I’m going to start having trouble finding volumes through interlibrary loan, however, as only one or two libraries in the network have had the last few volumes. The magical world here is consistent in texture and fits alongside the more mundane world in just the right way. Natsume is a sweetheart, and I like that his desire to help people drives so many stories.
Prince of Tennis 27-28 - I’m pretty sure that I’m finding these fun for the wrong reasons-- Mostly, they make me laugh at how over the top the tennis is. I also like making Scott boggle by pointing out that these characters are supposed to be in middle school. He doesn’t believe me. The library doesn't own the next volume and only has occasional volumes after that. I'm not sure if I'm dedicated enough to go to interlibrary loan.
Princess Decomposia and Count Spatula - For some reason, I wasn’t expecting a like/love story. I think it’s that the thumbnail image of the book cover in the library catalog made the Princess look about eight. I also had some idea that this was horror, but I wouldn’t classify it that way at all, in spite of zombies and skeletons and the like. The relationship between the title characters is sweet and supporting and just starting. The conflict comes mostly from the Decomposia’s father’s demands on her time and his unwillingness to have anything change, ever. Decomposia is a good person generally who tries to take care of everything even when it’s too much for her. Spatula is the newly hired cook. I didn’t quite like the art. It didn’t put me off entirely, and it suits a story set in a kingdom of the dead/mostly dead/undead, but I never warmed to it.
Rodriguez, Luis J. Borrowed Bones - This book is only 32 pages long, but I kept losing the thread of some of these poems. I suspect that it’s because I have zero familiarity with the places and things Rodriguez has written about. Some things cross cultural divides, and some not so much.
Science Ink - (collected and edited by Carl Zimmer). For a long time, Zimmer did a feature on his blog for which people sent in photographs of their science related tattoos along with explanations of why they chose those designs. I didn’t read all that much of the text, so maybe I shouldn’t count this as read, but I got it from the library entirely to look at the pictures, so… Well, I did what I intended to. There are a lot of different tattoos here. Some are animals. Some are molecules or formulae. There’s a tattoo of all of the known surviving parts of Lucy’s skeleton. I’m not convinced that neurons and ganglions make great tattoos because the images really looked to me like people with really nasty and large varicose veins on their arms. I’m pretty sure that wasn’t the intention.
Steven Universe v.1 - This is a collection of disconnected shorts in different artistic styles. I don’t think any of them are very substantial or that the characters are particularly well served by most of the stories.
Tyson, Neil DeGrasse. Astrophysics for People in a Hurry - Audiobook read by the author. Is there a word for the type of popular science book that’s designed as enticement for people who would like to learn but think that it’s beyond their ability to understand any of it because they’re not PhDs? If so, that’s what this is. I’m not sure how much I learned from this. It’s quite short as audiobooks go, only three and a half hours. The difficulty that I ran into is that I find Tyson’s voice soothing/relaxing and tended to let that lull me to the point that I wasn’t paying enough attention to catch details. Scott and I concluded that it’s just as well he didn’t try to listen to it as a stay awake while driving book (we listened to it together at home instead). I got the impression that this is more a wonder of the universe book than a nuts and bolts of how we currently think things might work book, and that makes sense given that it’s popular science for people without a lot of background knowledge.
Vernon, Ursula. Hamster Princess: Giant Trouble - I read this out of order because I lost track of the correct order and bought it. Fortunately, the continuity isn’t heavy enough that the stories suffer when read out of order. This one does Jack and the Beanstalk, more or less (with much more common sense and humor).
Vernon, Ursula. Hamster Princess: Ratpunzel - The main character, Harriet, continues to be a delight. I don’t think that reading this one (book 3) after book 4 made much difference at all.
What Did You Eat Yesterday? 7-8 - Still relatively low stress and sweet but with the sorts of real life ups and downs that normal people deal with. Still skimming the food preparation sections. Still recommending the series.
Started but not finished:
Beaton, M.C. Agatha Raisin and the Witch of Wyckhadden - Audiobook read by Penelope Keith. I didn’t even make it a chapter into this. I really, really didn’t like the title character. By fifteen minutes in, I was kind of hoping she’d be the murder victim. Since it’s a long series, that seemed unlikely, so I stopped.
Broaddus, Maurice. Buffalo Soldier - I kept thinking I’d get back to this and finish it really soon because it was so very short. Then I didn’t. During the bits I did read, I mostly wanted to use the setting for a tabletop RPG. I may come back to this; I may not.
Descender volume 1: Tin Stars - Too much blood and violence. I might have been interested in this as text only, just not as a graphic novel.
Gray, Nicholas Stuart. The Stone Cage - I got this by interlibrary loan. I expected a novel, but this is a play. It’s an adaptation of Rapunzel with a lot of focus on two original characters, animals (a cat and a raven) that Mother Gothel has changed to be more or less humanoid and intelligent and who she keeps as slaves. I read bits of this, but I was tired enough not to be able to dig down to find the right readings for the lines, so I couldn’t do more than skim the surface of the meaning.
Livio, Mario. Brilliant Blunders - Audiobook read by Jeff Cummings. Scott and I listened to the first three chapters and ended up bored. The title doesn’t actually fit what those chapters were about which was fairly detailed explanations of how things really worked. There wasn’t anything particularly new or unexpected.
Macintyre, Ben. Rogue Heroes - Audiobook read by author. Often a ‘read by author’ is a bad sign when the author isn’t a professional actor, but Macintyre reads engagingly with a certain lightness and humor. I didn’t finish this because Scott listened to large portions of it while I was around. That was enough for me to realize that I’m just not up for war stories right now. So not a bad book, just a not for me book.
McGuire, Seanan. Down Among the Sticks and Bones - I liked the premise of the first book in this series, so I thought I’d try this one in spite of it including some things that would normally be deal breakers. In the end, I never even made it to the parts that I expected to have trouble with. I simply wasn’t having any fun reading, so I stopped. My suspicion is that the things that interest me about the universe aren’t the same things that interest the author. It happens. I suppose that the fact that, of the worlds referenced in the first book, this was the one that interested me the least should have tipped me off to the mismatch.
Meyer, Marissa. Cinder - Audiobook read by Rebecca Soler. I listened to the first CD and quite liked it, but I kept hearing bits from later in the book as Scott listened to it while we were driving places, and I found those making me unbearably anxious, so I decided that maybe this wasn’t the right book for me. Cordelia adores the series, and Scott’s eagerly waiting to listen to the next one. I just… can’t.
Quinn, Spencer. Dog On It - My father insisted I try this, that the whole series was really, really funny. I didn’t find it at all amusing, so I stopped after a couple of chapters. It’s a mystery series told from the POV of the detective’s dog. Maybe if I was more of a dog person?
Sapkowski, Andrzej. Baptism of Fire - This is one of the novels set in the world of The Witcher game. I renewed the book five times and kept trying, but I really couldn’t get very far with it. I think it’s the third or even fourth novel (the library only has two, and the other has a later publication date), and I kept running into things that I could tell were supposed to resonate or to mean something to me. I just didn’t have any context. None of the characters came across as having much interior life, so it was a lot like watching not very good actors going through the motions of a story that ought to have interested me. The other thing that made reading difficult was that the translation was noticeably clunky. I’m pretty sure that it was accurate in terms of the bare bones, but there were times when I looked at things and thought that no native English speaker would use that phrase there, even though the meaning made sense, because the surrounding prose was too different in tone to support it. Those bits weren’t even placed for the phrasing to make sense as characterization or as emphasis, so they were speedbumps in my reading. At any rate, each renewal means four weeks, so I’ve had this book in the house for twenty four weeks. Time to let it go back to the library.
Snyder, Laurel. Orphan Island - I was going along okay with this until the POV character decided to swim into deep, ocean waters. I just couldn’t, and since I was skipping around anyway, I looked ahead. As far as I can tell, the main mystery of the book never gets solved. The point is for the main character to decide to move forward into the unknown. Oh, and terrible, terrible things happen when mysterious and arbitrary rules are disobeyed. I’m not so against the terrible things happening as I am against the rules remaining mysterious and arbitrary. So I was, once again, looking for a different story than the one the author wanted to tell.
Stevenson, D.E. Crooked Adam - I gave up on this one fairly quickly because the characters didn’t feel much like people. It’s a spy story written and set during WWII. I’m not convinced that it plays to the author’s talents.
Tomboy - There was nothing wrong with this graphic novel/memoir. I just kept picking it up at times when I was too tired and/or stressed to deal with it, and that left me not wanting to try reading it when I was feeling okay because, on some level, I thought I’d start feeling bad. I think, too, that I’m not the audience for this book. I’m too old, and I’ve always been gender conforming.
Tripp, Ben. The Accidental Highwayman - I simply didn’t find the style congenial.
The Wrenchies - No. No. No. Absolutely not. I don’t do horror. I don’t like seeing eyes put out or insects crawling out of places they don’t belong or… Just no.
Yotsuba&! 1 - This just isn’t my sort of thing. I think I get what other people love about it, but it’s not right for me. I think my standards for cute kid stories are different from what the manga-ka was aiming for. I read more than 100 pages just in case it was only a matter of getting used to the characters.
astolat. Moving On - Clark/Lex fic drawing on Smallville and on JL/JLU canon. 19K words. Lex Luthor conquers the galaxy. I laughed at least once. The fic on AO3.
Atherton, Nancy. Aunt Dimity & the Widow’s Curse - One of Lori’s elderly neighbors confesses to murder when she and Lori are alone at a quilting bee, so Lori sets out to find out the truth of the matter. Mostly this involves visiting another village and talking to people who remember when, and the question of murder or not isn’t actually a mystery.
Brennan, Marie. Cold-Forged Flame - I'd already read the book after this one, so I thought I knew what would be here. I was right about some of that, but this book covers a much briefer bit of time than I expected. There's a rather substantial gap between the two books where much of the backstory goes. That may be why I wasn't completely lost, starting with that one. I liked this book a good bit.
canis_m. Wet Spell - 10K words Spirited Away fic. It’s tagged as Mature, but I’d call it explicit. Grown up Chihiro and Haku stay at Zeniba’s house while she’s away. They’re glad of the privacy which they simply can’t get when Haku visits Chihiro in the mortal world. It’s mostly sex and relationship stuff (established relationship without angst). Everything’s fairly fluffy. The story on AO3.
Case Closed 40-42 - Actual story arc developments! Yea! I had stopped expecting them a long time back. My suspicion is that I won’t get more for a while. Maybe I’m wrong? I’m still moving slowly forward and will as long as I can find libraries in the MelCat system that have whatever volume I need next.
Cici 1-2 - These are very short graphic novels aimed, by my estimation, at the seven to ten year old cohort. The main character discovers that she's a fairy and has one day to decide whether or not to remain one. She's having a hard time because her father has moved out and her best friend is changing. If either volume broke fifty pages, I'd be surprised. Cici makes ten year old typical bad decisions that I couldn't have dealt with in larger doses. The most immediate bit of magic is that Cici starts seeing people with animal features.
DarkAuroran. What Otter Nonsense - 21K words Naruto fic with Iruka/Kakashi endgame. Kakashi brings home an orphaned otter and leaves it with Iruka while he goes on a mission. By the time Kakashi gets back, the otter has bonded with Iruka who attempts to raise it for eventual release. There’s a good bit of humor. The fic on AO3.
Espada, Martin. The Republic of Poetry - This is a very short book. I’m not sure I could have finished it if it had been longer because the poems are full of the pain of relatively recent history. In the first section, Espada talks a lot about the horrors of the Pinochet years in Chile. He’s very good at finding the small details that fit together into a potent mosaic. I don’t think it’s something to read if you’re stressed or upset already, but the poems work very well. The poems in the second and third sections are more individual but again fit together to make an image. A number of the poems are dedicated to specific poets and to political prisoners and martyrs.
gin007. The Book of the Dead - Babylon 5 fanfic, almost 78K words. This is about what happens to Londo after his death. The first section, his journey toward judgment, is really well done and made me wipe my eyes more than once. The shorter bit in the middle doesn’t work quite so IMO, but I think the author hit a knot in terms of being able to get from the first bit to the equally long end section and needed that middle bit to make that third section metaphysically plausible. The last section worked for me, too. It wasn’t as powerful as the first section and went more in the direction of ‘how do we fix all the things?’ and was correspondingly fluffier. Basically, if you read it, don’t stop at the bit in the middle. The story on AO3.
Jayne, Samantha. Quarter Life Poetry: Poems for the Young, Broke & Hangry - This is a very, very fast read. Each page has an illustration and a four line, rhymed poem talking about life as a single, unemployed/under employed college graduate. Some of them made me chuckle, but I’m well outside of the target demographic.
Kim Unsong. Poems of Modern Sijo - I think, looking at the cover flaps and the forewords, that these poems were written in English, using the Sijo forms, rather than translated from Korean to English, but I’m not 100% certain. My impression is that, if they were translated, the work was done by the author. I’m not sure I appreciated these properly because I kept getting stuck on grammar and because I, at least occasionally, disagreed with the bits of message I thought I understood. The book came out in 1995, and it mentions President Clinton so the publication must have been close to the writing. I think that this poems would read better for someone either more comfortable with free verse or someone with a broader knowledge of Sijo (I have zero knowledge). I’m getting books of poetry out of the library based more on length than anything else because, even if I’m not hugely into a particular poet’s work, I may still manage to finish a 200 page book when I’d not manage 200 pages of something much longer.
LullabyKnell. Team Iruka vs. Paperwork - Naruto WIP. I don’t care that this isn’t done yet. It made me cackle a couple of times, and Scott wanted to know what was so funny. The ninjas of Konoha have been getting drunkenly married for many many years in the belief that the particular ceremonies weren’t valid/binding. Some of them have made dozens of joke marriages. Then, while trying to clean up the bureaucracy, Iruka and his team discover that all of those marriages are legal and binding. Simultaneously legal and binding. Different characters react differently, and it’s a huge mess. But funny. So very funny,
Fic on AO3.
Natsume’s Book of Friends 8-10 - I’m still enjoying this series. I’m concerned that I’m going to start having trouble finding volumes through interlibrary loan, however, as only one or two libraries in the network have had the last few volumes. The magical world here is consistent in texture and fits alongside the more mundane world in just the right way. Natsume is a sweetheart, and I like that his desire to help people drives so many stories.
Prince of Tennis 27-28 - I’m pretty sure that I’m finding these fun for the wrong reasons-- Mostly, they make me laugh at how over the top the tennis is. I also like making Scott boggle by pointing out that these characters are supposed to be in middle school. He doesn’t believe me. The library doesn't own the next volume and only has occasional volumes after that. I'm not sure if I'm dedicated enough to go to interlibrary loan.
Princess Decomposia and Count Spatula - For some reason, I wasn’t expecting a like/love story. I think it’s that the thumbnail image of the book cover in the library catalog made the Princess look about eight. I also had some idea that this was horror, but I wouldn’t classify it that way at all, in spite of zombies and skeletons and the like. The relationship between the title characters is sweet and supporting and just starting. The conflict comes mostly from the Decomposia’s father’s demands on her time and his unwillingness to have anything change, ever. Decomposia is a good person generally who tries to take care of everything even when it’s too much for her. Spatula is the newly hired cook. I didn’t quite like the art. It didn’t put me off entirely, and it suits a story set in a kingdom of the dead/mostly dead/undead, but I never warmed to it.
Rodriguez, Luis J. Borrowed Bones - This book is only 32 pages long, but I kept losing the thread of some of these poems. I suspect that it’s because I have zero familiarity with the places and things Rodriguez has written about. Some things cross cultural divides, and some not so much.
Science Ink - (collected and edited by Carl Zimmer). For a long time, Zimmer did a feature on his blog for which people sent in photographs of their science related tattoos along with explanations of why they chose those designs. I didn’t read all that much of the text, so maybe I shouldn’t count this as read, but I got it from the library entirely to look at the pictures, so… Well, I did what I intended to. There are a lot of different tattoos here. Some are animals. Some are molecules or formulae. There’s a tattoo of all of the known surviving parts of Lucy’s skeleton. I’m not convinced that neurons and ganglions make great tattoos because the images really looked to me like people with really nasty and large varicose veins on their arms. I’m pretty sure that wasn’t the intention.
Steven Universe v.1 - This is a collection of disconnected shorts in different artistic styles. I don’t think any of them are very substantial or that the characters are particularly well served by most of the stories.
Tyson, Neil DeGrasse. Astrophysics for People in a Hurry - Audiobook read by the author. Is there a word for the type of popular science book that’s designed as enticement for people who would like to learn but think that it’s beyond their ability to understand any of it because they’re not PhDs? If so, that’s what this is. I’m not sure how much I learned from this. It’s quite short as audiobooks go, only three and a half hours. The difficulty that I ran into is that I find Tyson’s voice soothing/relaxing and tended to let that lull me to the point that I wasn’t paying enough attention to catch details. Scott and I concluded that it’s just as well he didn’t try to listen to it as a stay awake while driving book (we listened to it together at home instead). I got the impression that this is more a wonder of the universe book than a nuts and bolts of how we currently think things might work book, and that makes sense given that it’s popular science for people without a lot of background knowledge.
Vernon, Ursula. Hamster Princess: Giant Trouble - I read this out of order because I lost track of the correct order and bought it. Fortunately, the continuity isn’t heavy enough that the stories suffer when read out of order. This one does Jack and the Beanstalk, more or less (with much more common sense and humor).
Vernon, Ursula. Hamster Princess: Ratpunzel - The main character, Harriet, continues to be a delight. I don’t think that reading this one (book 3) after book 4 made much difference at all.
What Did You Eat Yesterday? 7-8 - Still relatively low stress and sweet but with the sorts of real life ups and downs that normal people deal with. Still skimming the food preparation sections. Still recommending the series.
Started but not finished:
Beaton, M.C. Agatha Raisin and the Witch of Wyckhadden - Audiobook read by Penelope Keith. I didn’t even make it a chapter into this. I really, really didn’t like the title character. By fifteen minutes in, I was kind of hoping she’d be the murder victim. Since it’s a long series, that seemed unlikely, so I stopped.
Broaddus, Maurice. Buffalo Soldier - I kept thinking I’d get back to this and finish it really soon because it was so very short. Then I didn’t. During the bits I did read, I mostly wanted to use the setting for a tabletop RPG. I may come back to this; I may not.
Descender volume 1: Tin Stars - Too much blood and violence. I might have been interested in this as text only, just not as a graphic novel.
Gray, Nicholas Stuart. The Stone Cage - I got this by interlibrary loan. I expected a novel, but this is a play. It’s an adaptation of Rapunzel with a lot of focus on two original characters, animals (a cat and a raven) that Mother Gothel has changed to be more or less humanoid and intelligent and who she keeps as slaves. I read bits of this, but I was tired enough not to be able to dig down to find the right readings for the lines, so I couldn’t do more than skim the surface of the meaning.
Livio, Mario. Brilliant Blunders - Audiobook read by Jeff Cummings. Scott and I listened to the first three chapters and ended up bored. The title doesn’t actually fit what those chapters were about which was fairly detailed explanations of how things really worked. There wasn’t anything particularly new or unexpected.
Macintyre, Ben. Rogue Heroes - Audiobook read by author. Often a ‘read by author’ is a bad sign when the author isn’t a professional actor, but Macintyre reads engagingly with a certain lightness and humor. I didn’t finish this because Scott listened to large portions of it while I was around. That was enough for me to realize that I’m just not up for war stories right now. So not a bad book, just a not for me book.
McGuire, Seanan. Down Among the Sticks and Bones - I liked the premise of the first book in this series, so I thought I’d try this one in spite of it including some things that would normally be deal breakers. In the end, I never even made it to the parts that I expected to have trouble with. I simply wasn’t having any fun reading, so I stopped. My suspicion is that the things that interest me about the universe aren’t the same things that interest the author. It happens. I suppose that the fact that, of the worlds referenced in the first book, this was the one that interested me the least should have tipped me off to the mismatch.
Meyer, Marissa. Cinder - Audiobook read by Rebecca Soler. I listened to the first CD and quite liked it, but I kept hearing bits from later in the book as Scott listened to it while we were driving places, and I found those making me unbearably anxious, so I decided that maybe this wasn’t the right book for me. Cordelia adores the series, and Scott’s eagerly waiting to listen to the next one. I just… can’t.
Quinn, Spencer. Dog On It - My father insisted I try this, that the whole series was really, really funny. I didn’t find it at all amusing, so I stopped after a couple of chapters. It’s a mystery series told from the POV of the detective’s dog. Maybe if I was more of a dog person?
Sapkowski, Andrzej. Baptism of Fire - This is one of the novels set in the world of The Witcher game. I renewed the book five times and kept trying, but I really couldn’t get very far with it. I think it’s the third or even fourth novel (the library only has two, and the other has a later publication date), and I kept running into things that I could tell were supposed to resonate or to mean something to me. I just didn’t have any context. None of the characters came across as having much interior life, so it was a lot like watching not very good actors going through the motions of a story that ought to have interested me. The other thing that made reading difficult was that the translation was noticeably clunky. I’m pretty sure that it was accurate in terms of the bare bones, but there were times when I looked at things and thought that no native English speaker would use that phrase there, even though the meaning made sense, because the surrounding prose was too different in tone to support it. Those bits weren’t even placed for the phrasing to make sense as characterization or as emphasis, so they were speedbumps in my reading. At any rate, each renewal means four weeks, so I’ve had this book in the house for twenty four weeks. Time to let it go back to the library.
Snyder, Laurel. Orphan Island - I was going along okay with this until the POV character decided to swim into deep, ocean waters. I just couldn’t, and since I was skipping around anyway, I looked ahead. As far as I can tell, the main mystery of the book never gets solved. The point is for the main character to decide to move forward into the unknown. Oh, and terrible, terrible things happen when mysterious and arbitrary rules are disobeyed. I’m not so against the terrible things happening as I am against the rules remaining mysterious and arbitrary. So I was, once again, looking for a different story than the one the author wanted to tell.
Stevenson, D.E. Crooked Adam - I gave up on this one fairly quickly because the characters didn’t feel much like people. It’s a spy story written and set during WWII. I’m not convinced that it plays to the author’s talents.
Tomboy - There was nothing wrong with this graphic novel/memoir. I just kept picking it up at times when I was too tired and/or stressed to deal with it, and that left me not wanting to try reading it when I was feeling okay because, on some level, I thought I’d start feeling bad. I think, too, that I’m not the audience for this book. I’m too old, and I’ve always been gender conforming.
Tripp, Ben. The Accidental Highwayman - I simply didn’t find the style congenial.
The Wrenchies - No. No. No. Absolutely not. I don’t do horror. I don’t like seeing eyes put out or insects crawling out of places they don’t belong or… Just no.
Yotsuba&! 1 - This just isn’t my sort of thing. I think I get what other people love about it, but it’s not right for me. I think my standards for cute kid stories are different from what the manga-ka was aiming for. I read more than 100 pages just in case it was only a matter of getting used to the characters.
no subject
Date: 2017-08-31 02:03 am (UTC)