Book Logging
Mar. 25th, 2015 01:18 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
the_rckAnderson, M.T. Whales on Stilts! - This only took me about an hour to read. It was silly fun, and I shall have to look to see what else the author has written. This involves a girl discovering that her father works for an evil genius who wants to conquer the world. Her father doesn't believe that that's true even though his boss is quite open about it. The girl has two friends who are always having spectacular adventures, so she naturally turns to them for help.
Flight v. 1 - This is an anthology of short comics. I liked some of them. Many of them seemed to be pieces of much larger stories. There were, though, quite a few that I couldn't follow at all-- For some the art was too muddy and muddled. For others, I just didn't get what was going on.
Knights of the Lunch Table: The Battling Bands - This one was light fun. It's the third book in the series. I think one could read it without having read the previous books, but there are some things that wouldn't work nearly as well without history with the characters.
Krentz, Jayne Ann. Trust No One - I figured out the final villain in this one because there was literally no one else left who it could be, and I knew, by the number of pages left, that there had to be an additional villain. I'm just glad that Krentz is willing to let her heroines rescue themselves before the hero comes crashing in.
Mertz, Barbara. Red Land, Black Land - I had to get this through interlibrary loan. I have a long list of things I want to try to get that way, and I'm not sure how I decided that this one would be next. This is a book about everyday life in ancient Egypt. It focuses mostly on the upper class because that's what we know the most about, but the author was upfront about that.
Ortberg, Mallory. Texts from Jane Eyre - I suspect that most of this book is funnier if one knows the sources the author is riffing off of. Those that I knew something about, I enjoyed, but I was at sea about others. This was a really fast read. It's worth picking up from the library.
Owly & Wormy: Bright Lights and Starry Nights - This is the last of the Owly books that our library has (I have no idea if there are others that the library doesn't have). It was really very short. I think it took me less than five minutes to get through it. This one is the adventures of Owly and Wormy as they try to use their telescope to view the stars.
Rapunzel's Revenge - I enjoyed this interpretation of Rapunzel. I liked that Rapunzel had agency and, while ignorant of a lot of things, was fairly intelligent. I've been warned that the sequel isn't nearly as good (I think 'awful' was the word I saw used to describe it), but I may try that anyway.
The Secret Science Alliance and the Copycat Crook - This is a graphic novel about three kids who build wild inventions. A bad guy steals their notebook, and they have to get it back before he takes credit for all of their inventions.
Tyldesley, Joyce A. Hatchepsut: the Female Pharaoh - I find it kind of interesting that there's enough known (or almost, kind of, sort of known) to make a book. Egyptian history is full of guesses and maybes, so this book is, too. The author makes a pretty good case for most of her theories, but I'd be interested in hearing alternative theories and seeing how those who hold them support them.
Weatherford, J. McIver. Genghis Khan and the Making of the Modern World - I put this on my list of books to try because I enjoyed the author's The Secret History of the Mongol Queens. Weatherford argues that the trade and cultural exchange produced by the Mongol empire directly caused the European Renaissance. He definitely seems to regret that the plague caused the collapse of the empire.
Books started but not finished:
Cartoon Introduction to Economics. Volume 1, Microeconomics - I got about halfway through this. I stopped because I found myself arguing with the book. I could see the theory as a sort of idealized thing, but people don't really work the way that this book assumes they do.
El Deafo - This was very good but not for me. It's a graphic novel, told in the first person, about a girl who loses her hearing when she's four and how she navigates growing up. I think I made it through to third or fourth grade, maybe a third of the book. I believed in the character and in the situations she faced and in the ways the people around her reacted. I just found it painful to see the troubles she caused herself and the troubles other people caused her. Recommended to people who like this sort of thing.
Flight v. 1 - This is an anthology of short comics. I liked some of them. Many of them seemed to be pieces of much larger stories. There were, though, quite a few that I couldn't follow at all-- For some the art was too muddy and muddled. For others, I just didn't get what was going on.
Knights of the Lunch Table: The Battling Bands - This one was light fun. It's the third book in the series. I think one could read it without having read the previous books, but there are some things that wouldn't work nearly as well without history with the characters.
Krentz, Jayne Ann. Trust No One - I figured out the final villain in this one because there was literally no one else left who it could be, and I knew, by the number of pages left, that there had to be an additional villain. I'm just glad that Krentz is willing to let her heroines rescue themselves before the hero comes crashing in.
Mertz, Barbara. Red Land, Black Land - I had to get this through interlibrary loan. I have a long list of things I want to try to get that way, and I'm not sure how I decided that this one would be next. This is a book about everyday life in ancient Egypt. It focuses mostly on the upper class because that's what we know the most about, but the author was upfront about that.
Ortberg, Mallory. Texts from Jane Eyre - I suspect that most of this book is funnier if one knows the sources the author is riffing off of. Those that I knew something about, I enjoyed, but I was at sea about others. This was a really fast read. It's worth picking up from the library.
Owly & Wormy: Bright Lights and Starry Nights - This is the last of the Owly books that our library has (I have no idea if there are others that the library doesn't have). It was really very short. I think it took me less than five minutes to get through it. This one is the adventures of Owly and Wormy as they try to use their telescope to view the stars.
Rapunzel's Revenge - I enjoyed this interpretation of Rapunzel. I liked that Rapunzel had agency and, while ignorant of a lot of things, was fairly intelligent. I've been warned that the sequel isn't nearly as good (I think 'awful' was the word I saw used to describe it), but I may try that anyway.
The Secret Science Alliance and the Copycat Crook - This is a graphic novel about three kids who build wild inventions. A bad guy steals their notebook, and they have to get it back before he takes credit for all of their inventions.
Tyldesley, Joyce A. Hatchepsut: the Female Pharaoh - I find it kind of interesting that there's enough known (or almost, kind of, sort of known) to make a book. Egyptian history is full of guesses and maybes, so this book is, too. The author makes a pretty good case for most of her theories, but I'd be interested in hearing alternative theories and seeing how those who hold them support them.
Weatherford, J. McIver. Genghis Khan and the Making of the Modern World - I put this on my list of books to try because I enjoyed the author's The Secret History of the Mongol Queens. Weatherford argues that the trade and cultural exchange produced by the Mongol empire directly caused the European Renaissance. He definitely seems to regret that the plague caused the collapse of the empire.
Books started but not finished:
Cartoon Introduction to Economics. Volume 1, Microeconomics - I got about halfway through this. I stopped because I found myself arguing with the book. I could see the theory as a sort of idealized thing, but people don't really work the way that this book assumes they do.
El Deafo - This was very good but not for me. It's a graphic novel, told in the first person, about a girl who loses her hearing when she's four and how she navigates growing up. I think I made it through to third or fourth grade, maybe a third of the book. I believed in the character and in the situations she faced and in the ways the people around her reacted. I just found it painful to see the troubles she caused herself and the troubles other people caused her. Recommended to people who like this sort of thing.
no subject
Date: 2015-03-25 05:34 pm (UTC)Dammit I was sure I'd seen a cartoon speaking to this on Alas, a blog, but I can't seem to find it...
no subject
Date: 2015-03-25 05:41 pm (UTC)And which doesn't address things like pollution, over harvesting of resources, or shortages of necessities.
no subject
Date: 2015-03-25 05:44 pm (UTC)Yep, yep, and I'll bet it also didn't go into how the point of slash problem with capitalism as a system is all the money ends up in the pockets of a lucky privileged few. That is, after all, capitalism's main feature, not a bug!
no subject
Date: 2015-03-25 05:49 pm (UTC)I'm not a big fan of capitalism as such. I'm much more of a socialist. I think we all have an obligation to help each other and that we're all entitled to the necessities of life as a right.
no subject
Date: 2015-03-25 05:57 pm (UTC)Technically the thing where XYZ Corp's CEO makes fifty times what XYZ Corp's least-well-paid full-time employee makes doesn't constitute theft from that employee or her equally poorly paid buddies. Free contracts and shit. Gotta love the technicalities. But yeah.
no subject
Date: 2015-03-25 07:51 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2015-03-25 11:58 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2015-03-26 12:32 am (UTC)I haven't cracked the next one yet, but I probably will this weekend.
no subject
Date: 2015-03-25 09:19 pm (UTC)2. Calamity Jack was as big a hit in our house as Rapunzel's Revenge.
no subject
Date: 2015-03-26 12:01 am (UTC)That's good to know about Calamity Jack.
no subject
Date: 2015-03-28 04:46 am (UTC)Seriously, Ana, who was in second grade at the time, started a book club around those books. Like, she brought them to school and carefully traded them around with her friends on a rota.
It was epic.
It's still one of her favorites, and mine too :)