Book Logging
Jan. 28th, 2016 03:59 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
the_rckCarroll, Lewis. The Annotated Alice: Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland and Through the Looking Glass - I’d read the two stories before but not since college, so details had gotten blurry (thirty years will do that). I found Martin Gardner’s comments on Carroll/Dodgson and his history very interesting, but a lot of the mathematical stuff kind of bounced off as requiring more work than I was willing to do in my bedtime reading. There were a few annotations that I think were dated enough to need annotations themselves, and Gardner kept referring readers to illustrations that weren’t actually in the edition I had in my hands.
Ghostopolis - I was wary of this because I worried that it would go too far in a horror direction for me, but I ended up okay with it. The basic premise is that an exorcist accidentally ends up sending a living boy to the land of the dead when he sends back a critter that has crossed over into the land of the living. The story follows various people trying to find the kid and the kid’s adventures. The land of the dead is fairly dystopian, but that is shown to be a recent development.
Hatke, Ben. Julia’s House for Lost Creatures - Amazon and GoodReads both kept pushing this on me. I was pretty sure it was a picture book (it is), and I don’t normally read those, not since Cordelia outgrew them. This one is cute and charming, but it’s a picture book and so not really my thing.
Krentz, Jayne Ann. Secret Sisters - There wasn’t anything particularly surprising about this one, at least not for anyone who’s read other books by Krentz. There’s some variation in as much as there is a secondary romantic couple (the heroine’s best friend and the hero’s brother). I also boggled a bit at the string of villainous dominoes. Usually, Krentz has two layers of villain. This time, there were rather more. I suppose that’s spoilery, but I kind of assume that nobody clicks on these unless they don’t care about spoilers, don’t intend to read the book, or already have read the book.
Munroe, Randall. Thing Explainer - This was a lot of fun, but it also took longer to read than I expected based on the thinness of the book. The author decided to draw large diagrams of things and label them with explanations using only the thousand most common words in English (he talks a bit at the end about how he picked those words). The main thing I noticed was that ’nine’ was not included among them. One through eight and ten were all included, just not nine, and Munroe used 'almost ten' instead. I think this book would be terrible on an ereader. It’s very tall and wide, and the print is tiny enough that I had to strain to read some of it.
Okorafor, Nnedi. Binti - I both think this needed to be longer and that I wouldn’t have finished it if it had been. The length was just right for me to be able to deal with my anxiety long enough to finish, and I probably couldn’t have done that if it went on longer. At the same time, I wanted to know more about the universe and about the point of view character’s interactions with it. There were a lot of references to things that never got explored. The story also felt weirdly superficial, but I think that was a deliberate stylistic choice. The narration was first person, and the character in question came across as private enough not to want to dig into the sorts of things that I wanted to see.
Prestwich, Michael. Medieval People: Vivid Lives in a Distant Landscape: from Charlemagne to Piero della Francesca - I'm torn about this book. It's gorgeous, and it provided me with an introduction to a number of people that I knew nothing about. It's also light and thoroughly readable. It's the sort of thing one can dip into at random or read straight through. I never had trouble putting it down because I could always finish the entry I was working on quickly, and I always picked the book up again. The downside is that the biographies are extremely superficial; each one runs 2-4 pages and includes lots of illustrations. There were also points at which the author asserted things that made me go, "Wait. What?" and then didn't elaborate or support his points. On several occasions, I found myself asking, "How on earth could anyone know that?" when he made claims about particular historical figures' emotional states/relationships. There also wasn't much of a bibliography, and I expected something hefty.
Vernon, Ursula. Hamster Princess: Harriet the Invincible - I adored this. I finished it and looked at Scott and said, "I want you to read this." He probably won’t because he’d be embarrassed to read it at work and doesn’t tend to read at home. Harriet is a wonderful character, and the narrative turns some expectations upside down while carrying some others through. It’s a very, very short book. I think it took me less than half an hour to finish.
What Did You Eat Yesterday? v.1 - I suspect that there’s an entire level to this that I missed because my eyes glazed over during the detailed food preparation. I’m not certain that I’ll go on with this series because of that because I don’t think it’s something I can do better with. I liked the characters and their interactions. Yoshinaga is good at writing real people with real difficulties and relationships.
Wonderland - This is a graphic novel about someone who’s mentioned in Alice in Wonderland but who never appears in the book: the White Rabbit’s servant, Mary Ann. I think that I would have bounced off of this if I hadn’t recently reread Alice because a lot of it depends on the reader knowing the details of who’s who and how they relate to each other. I didn’t really like the art.
Zinn, David. Temporary Preserves - Zinn is a local artist who does a lot of sidewalk chalk art, here and elsewhere. This book is the product of an Indiegogo campaign that, had I known about it, I’d have contributed to. This book contains photographs of the works he’s done that he likes best and/or thinks are most representative with a little bit of accompanying text explaining where his running characters come from.
Started but not finished:
Fink, Joseph and Jeffrey Cranor. Welcome to Night Vale - Unfortunately, I didn’t realize that this would be a difficult read. My problem was that I could only handle a chapter or two (at most, three) at a time before I needed a break, and there’s a waitlist at the library. I’m not sure this is readable in the way that I would normally read a novel. It would probably work better as a serial. The feel was very much the feel of the podcast, but I got the impression that there was meant to be a through line for the story, and I’m not convinced that that actually made for a better book. The strength of the podcast, in my opinion, is largely that it’s a mosaic. Patterns emerge gradually, and things connect to other things that they’re unexpectedly adjacent to.
Hughes, Langston. The Collected Poems of Langston Hughes - I didn’t finish this not because I wasn’t into it but because it was so very, very long. With a book of poetry, I don’t feel the same urge toward completion that I would with a novel (and there are a heck of a lot of novels I don’t finish). I like pretty much all of the poems I tried (I’m not thinking of any specific exceptions, but there likely were some). There’s something about the voice of Hughes’ poems that works for me, that feels relatably human. I believe I mentioned before that these reminded me of what I like about The Spoon River Anthology, and that still holds. The styles are quite different, but there’s something there in common. I’ve put Hughes collected works on my Amazon wishlist. Of course, that prompted Amazon to think that I might also want to buy all of his individual books. Just another way in which the Amazon algorithms are stupid.
This One Summer - This is a graphic novel about a girl and her family during their vacation at the place they go every summer and about the people they deal with there, both the other regular vacationers and the townies. There’s a lot of stuff that’s implied more than stated, and I got the impression that that’s because the story is very solidly anchored in the girl’s POV— There are things she doesn’t understand. There are things she imagines. At any rate, this wasn’t really my sort of thing, and it was long enough that I didn’t feel like carrying through regardless.
Viets, Elaine. Murder Between the Covers - Another mystery I just didn’t click with. That seems to happen with nine out of ten that I try cold.
Ghostopolis - I was wary of this because I worried that it would go too far in a horror direction for me, but I ended up okay with it. The basic premise is that an exorcist accidentally ends up sending a living boy to the land of the dead when he sends back a critter that has crossed over into the land of the living. The story follows various people trying to find the kid and the kid’s adventures. The land of the dead is fairly dystopian, but that is shown to be a recent development.
Hatke, Ben. Julia’s House for Lost Creatures - Amazon and GoodReads both kept pushing this on me. I was pretty sure it was a picture book (it is), and I don’t normally read those, not since Cordelia outgrew them. This one is cute and charming, but it’s a picture book and so not really my thing.
Krentz, Jayne Ann. Secret Sisters - There wasn’t anything particularly surprising about this one, at least not for anyone who’s read other books by Krentz. There’s some variation in as much as there is a secondary romantic couple (the heroine’s best friend and the hero’s brother). I also boggled a bit at the string of villainous dominoes. Usually, Krentz has two layers of villain. This time, there were rather more. I suppose that’s spoilery, but I kind of assume that nobody clicks on these unless they don’t care about spoilers, don’t intend to read the book, or already have read the book.
Munroe, Randall. Thing Explainer - This was a lot of fun, but it also took longer to read than I expected based on the thinness of the book. The author decided to draw large diagrams of things and label them with explanations using only the thousand most common words in English (he talks a bit at the end about how he picked those words). The main thing I noticed was that ’nine’ was not included among them. One through eight and ten were all included, just not nine, and Munroe used 'almost ten' instead. I think this book would be terrible on an ereader. It’s very tall and wide, and the print is tiny enough that I had to strain to read some of it.
Okorafor, Nnedi. Binti - I both think this needed to be longer and that I wouldn’t have finished it if it had been. The length was just right for me to be able to deal with my anxiety long enough to finish, and I probably couldn’t have done that if it went on longer. At the same time, I wanted to know more about the universe and about the point of view character’s interactions with it. There were a lot of references to things that never got explored. The story also felt weirdly superficial, but I think that was a deliberate stylistic choice. The narration was first person, and the character in question came across as private enough not to want to dig into the sorts of things that I wanted to see.
Prestwich, Michael. Medieval People: Vivid Lives in a Distant Landscape: from Charlemagne to Piero della Francesca - I'm torn about this book. It's gorgeous, and it provided me with an introduction to a number of people that I knew nothing about. It's also light and thoroughly readable. It's the sort of thing one can dip into at random or read straight through. I never had trouble putting it down because I could always finish the entry I was working on quickly, and I always picked the book up again. The downside is that the biographies are extremely superficial; each one runs 2-4 pages and includes lots of illustrations. There were also points at which the author asserted things that made me go, "Wait. What?" and then didn't elaborate or support his points. On several occasions, I found myself asking, "How on earth could anyone know that?" when he made claims about particular historical figures' emotional states/relationships. There also wasn't much of a bibliography, and I expected something hefty.
Vernon, Ursula. Hamster Princess: Harriet the Invincible - I adored this. I finished it and looked at Scott and said, "I want you to read this." He probably won’t because he’d be embarrassed to read it at work and doesn’t tend to read at home. Harriet is a wonderful character, and the narrative turns some expectations upside down while carrying some others through. It’s a very, very short book. I think it took me less than half an hour to finish.
What Did You Eat Yesterday? v.1 - I suspect that there’s an entire level to this that I missed because my eyes glazed over during the detailed food preparation. I’m not certain that I’ll go on with this series because of that because I don’t think it’s something I can do better with. I liked the characters and their interactions. Yoshinaga is good at writing real people with real difficulties and relationships.
Wonderland - This is a graphic novel about someone who’s mentioned in Alice in Wonderland but who never appears in the book: the White Rabbit’s servant, Mary Ann. I think that I would have bounced off of this if I hadn’t recently reread Alice because a lot of it depends on the reader knowing the details of who’s who and how they relate to each other. I didn’t really like the art.
Zinn, David. Temporary Preserves - Zinn is a local artist who does a lot of sidewalk chalk art, here and elsewhere. This book is the product of an Indiegogo campaign that, had I known about it, I’d have contributed to. This book contains photographs of the works he’s done that he likes best and/or thinks are most representative with a little bit of accompanying text explaining where his running characters come from.
Started but not finished:
Fink, Joseph and Jeffrey Cranor. Welcome to Night Vale - Unfortunately, I didn’t realize that this would be a difficult read. My problem was that I could only handle a chapter or two (at most, three) at a time before I needed a break, and there’s a waitlist at the library. I’m not sure this is readable in the way that I would normally read a novel. It would probably work better as a serial. The feel was very much the feel of the podcast, but I got the impression that there was meant to be a through line for the story, and I’m not convinced that that actually made for a better book. The strength of the podcast, in my opinion, is largely that it’s a mosaic. Patterns emerge gradually, and things connect to other things that they’re unexpectedly adjacent to.
Hughes, Langston. The Collected Poems of Langston Hughes - I didn’t finish this not because I wasn’t into it but because it was so very, very long. With a book of poetry, I don’t feel the same urge toward completion that I would with a novel (and there are a heck of a lot of novels I don’t finish). I like pretty much all of the poems I tried (I’m not thinking of any specific exceptions, but there likely were some). There’s something about the voice of Hughes’ poems that works for me, that feels relatably human. I believe I mentioned before that these reminded me of what I like about The Spoon River Anthology, and that still holds. The styles are quite different, but there’s something there in common. I’ve put Hughes collected works on my Amazon wishlist. Of course, that prompted Amazon to think that I might also want to buy all of his individual books. Just another way in which the Amazon algorithms are stupid.
This One Summer - This is a graphic novel about a girl and her family during their vacation at the place they go every summer and about the people they deal with there, both the other regular vacationers and the townies. There’s a lot of stuff that’s implied more than stated, and I got the impression that that’s because the story is very solidly anchored in the girl’s POV— There are things she doesn’t understand. There are things she imagines. At any rate, this wasn’t really my sort of thing, and it was long enough that I didn’t feel like carrying through regardless.
Viets, Elaine. Murder Between the Covers - Another mystery I just didn’t click with. That seems to happen with nine out of ten that I try cold.
![[identity profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/openid.png){kind=small}
no subject
Date: 2016-01-28 09:16 pm (UTC)The thing with What Did You Eat Yesterday is that you don't need to read the recipes/food prep portions if you don't want to. Her characters and their situations are just so well observed that I keep coming back for more. :)
no subject
Date: 2016-01-29 06:45 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2016-01-29 08:31 pm (UTC)Regardless, it wasn't a very bright move, and all Viets' characters have the same voice, so you're just fine skipping the series.
no subject
Date: 2016-01-29 09:13 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2016-01-29 01:13 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2016-01-29 06:47 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2016-01-29 07:14 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2016-01-29 06:49 pm (UTC)I'm not sure that I'd want to listen to more of the book than about half an hour at a time, but listening would be easier because I could do something else like bake or wash dishes while I did it, and that would keep me at the right distance from the text.
tor.com; ursulav
Date: 2016-01-28 10:24 pm (UTC)Ursula Vernon has been becoming a favorite of mine over the last year, since I "met" her as a result of The Recent Awards Unpleasantness. She's got a great LiveJournal, with lots of hand-drawn pages and gardening notes, at "ursulav." I've given copies of "Harriet the Invincible" and "Castle Hangnail", two of her newer younger-reader books, and I should read them myself. Under the name T.Kingfisher she does fairy tale reworkings for adults. She's got a brand-new folktale re-spinning at Apex Magazine called "Razorback", and now I'm going to worry that it's a little dark for you. :-(
Re: tor.com; ursulav
Date: 2016-01-29 07:12 pm (UTC)I love Castle Hangnail even more than I love Harriet the Invincible. Castle Hangnail is a little more substantial and aimed slightly older. The AADL has both books and has an order in for the second Hamster Princess book. They have nine of the eleven Dragonbreath books, but so far, in spite of requests, they haven't gotten the last two Dragonbreath books. I have Seventh Bride, one of the Kingfisher books, out from the library in paper right now. I just haven't gotten to it yet because it can be renewed while other things can't.
I read
no subject
Date: 2016-01-29 11:53 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2016-01-30 05:10 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2016-01-30 08:04 pm (UTC)