Book Logging
Aug. 22nd, 2011 10:11 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
the_rckI started and abandoned a fair number of Project Gutenberg books this time out. I didn't log all of them because the reasons got repetitious. I downloaded a bunch of science fiction for my travels, forgetting the things that make me avoid most old SF. It was a reminder of the age of the stories when I ran into things set in the 1960s or 1970s.
Allison, Jennifer. Gilda Joyce Psychic Investigator - I didn't really enjoy this. I kept waiting for consequences to crash in on Gilda, but the consequences for her actions were never as severe as what I imagined. I wouldn't have enjoyed reading about consequences-- I'd have cringed and skimmed. I just couldn't help anxiously expecting them. Because she made me so anxious, I never really warmed to Gilda. I felt a lot of sympathy for her missing her dead father and for her writing letters to him. I just didn't feel a lot of sympathy otherwise. I think I'd have liked the book if I'd read it when I was about ten.
Arnold, Edwin L. Gulliver of Mars - I got about a third of the way into this Project Gutenberg book. I got cranky with the style. It's a first person narrative. A U.S. naval officer makes a wish that lands him on Mars. He's very judgmental of the society he finds there, and the narrative seemed to me to support his judgment. I didn't like the sense that the narrator knew better than anyone else.
Avatar the Last Airbender: Lost Adventures - This is a collection of short stories, in graphic format, set throughout the series. They're all moments not presented in the show. They vary a lot in tone, from very funny to a little sad. I enjoyed the stories, but few of them have stuck with me. Delia has read half of the book and has enjoyed it, so it has appeal for kids, too. Scott, the one who actually bought the book, hasn't had a chance to read it yet.
Baum, L. Frank. The Enchanted Island of Yew - This book is one of the Project Gutenberg books I downloaded for my time offline while visiting my relatives. It's a peculiar story in many ways-- I found myself finishing it and wanting to talk about it. The story centers on a female fairy who desperately wants a change, so she gets a mortal girl to change her into a mortal for year. In order that she may have the opportunity to travel and explore and have adventures, she decides to be transformed into a young man rather than a girl. I wanted more exploration of what that change meant, but it was just sort of there. Additional oddness came from the sidekick the hero picked up-- The sidekick was a young man who'd always had everything going his way and who was bored with it. He wanted to suffer pain, humiliation and all forms of misery. He pursues that with enthusiasm. It all comes across as not quite a children's book. A warning for anyone who may go looking for this-- There is a chapter that's appallingly racist. It could be skipped without any damage to the story. I wish I thought there was fanfic out there for this. Maybe if I do Yuletide this year, I'll ask for it.
Brockway, Connie. So Enchanting - I read more of this book than I expected to. I actually expected to bounce off it hard. I often do with romances. I ended up not finishing the book because I was peeved by the difficulties between the hero and heroine-- She has something like animal empathy, and he's a skeptic specializing in catching frauds. He actually exposed her and her first husband as phony psychics years ago. The non-romance plot felt a bit rushed and a bit out of left field.
McCall Smith, Alexander. Akimbo and the Elephants - In this installment in the series, Akimbo decides to stop poachers by making them think he's one of them so that he can find out their plans. I liked this less well than Akimbo and the Snakes. I knew Akimbo would be fine, but I disliked him actually seeking out danger.
McCall Smith, Alexander. Akimbo and the Lions - In this volume of the series, Akimbo raises an abandoned lion cub. There's no great depth to the story, and it runs along in predictable lines. That's not to say that it's bad. I'm not the intended audience-- It's aimed at early elementary school readers.
McCall Smith, Alexander. 44 Scotland Street - This book was written as a serial, published in a newspaper. I found it too fragmented to follow. Each character was interesting, but there were so many of them that I lost track of who was who, and just as I'd get interested in what was going on with one character, the narrative would shift to another. I think I might have liked it more if I'd been reading it as it was serialized. As it was, I didn't finish it. I didn't even make it very far in. I did open it at random in a couple of places and read for a while there. If I'd been truly desperate for something to read, I probably would have forced my way through.
McCall Smith, Alexander. Friends, Lovers, Chocolate - I feel like there aren't enough interesting characters in this series. I'm not sure why because I can name (well, not name. I've forgotten the names) three or four characters off the top of my head. I'm just vaguely dissatisfied with this book. I think some of it is that I keep waiting for something good to happen to the main character, but nothing does.
McCall Smith, Alexander. The Saturday Big Tent Wedding Party - This is the most recent book in the No. 1 Ladies Detective Agency series, or, at least, the most recent one the library has. I enjoyed this installment. I liked visiting with the characters. There was nothing very surprising in this installment.
McCall Smith, Alexander. The Sunday Philosophy Club - I liked the characters in this book, but I thought that the mystery, such as it was, was rather thin. The book might have been better without it. I don't think this series will displace The No. 1 Ladies' Detective Agency in my affections, but it wasn't a bad way to pass some time. I've got a hold on the next book in the series.
Morris, William. Child Christopher and Goldilind the Fair - I didn't finish this, but I did read about two thirds of it. Then I stopped and realized that I didn't care and didn't really want to read the rest. This is another Project Gutenberg book. It's written in a pseudo-archaic style that annoyed me. I mainly got as far as I did because I started the book late at night while I was playing Delia's going to bed CD. I kept waiting for something interesting to happen, and it didn't.
Naruto 50-51 - I've lost track of who all these people fighting are. In some of the fights, I wasn't sure who I should be pulling for because I simply didn't know who was who. I'm waiting for something interesting to happen, and I suspect I may have to wait quite a while.
Nesbit, E. The Book of Dragons - I'm pretty sure I read this some time ago, but I didn't remember any of the stories. Nesbit has a way of making the most unbelievable things seem commonplace. These stories are all like that. This is another Project Gutenberg book.
Nesbit, E. The Enchanted Castle - I thought I'd read this, but if I had, I'd forgotten most of it. I got this from Project Gutenberg to read during my time without internet. This version contained some odd formatting and typos, but I could figure out what was meant. I liked the magic ring, and I felt that the children behaved as children would. There was one unfortunate chapter in which one of the children put on blackface.
Piper, H. Beam. The Cosmic Computer - This is a Project Gutenberg book. I got through about half of this before I gave up. I wasn't interested in the battle the characters were about to undertake, and I was finding too much cognitive dissonance in the places where my politics differ from Piper's. (There was also dissonance in everybody smoking, the behavior of the women, the way that computers worked.) The story follows a young man who attempts to help his home planet recover economically by encouraging people to hunt for a super computer he believes to be mythical. He plans to use the search to get industry going and to build a space ship and so on.
Shearin, Lisa. The Trouble with Demons - I can't remember if I ever blogged the second book in this series (I think it was called Armed and Magical, but I might be misremembering, and I can't be bothered to go look it up). This is the third book. I have mixed feelings about this book-- It was fun, quite a ride, but the overarching plot advanced not one bit. I'm not sure how long the author can keep up the frenetic pace, with the heroine hunted by all sorts of people and tied to an evil artifact that wants her to feed it souls, without losing my interest. I got tired just reading this book. I don't think the heroine has had a chance to stop and draw breath anywhere in the series. This is not to say that the book-- and the series-- hasn't been entertaining. It was, enough so that I put the next two books into my Amazon cart so that I don't lose track of them. I'm just not sure I can sustain my interest when all that happens is another huge crisis.
Swendson, Shanna. Don't Hex With Texas - This is (I'm guessing) the fourth book in a series. Apart from this one, I've only read the first book, Enchanted, Inc. (and I'm not sure I actually finished it). I can't remember why I put this on my list of library books to read, but I did, and I had fun with it. Pity it's the only Swendson book the library has. The heroine is a person immune to magic. She had a job working for a large magical company in New York but ended up leaving to return to her home town in Texas. After she's been home for a while, magical events start happening in her home town, and she reports them to her former employer. Her former employer sends people to investigate. There's a good bit of humor involved.
Uehashi, Nahoko. Moribito: Guardian of the Spirit - I got this from the library in hopes that it would help with my Parallels Fic story. The differences between the novel and the anime were sufficient, however, that I mainly relied on it for the spelling of certain terms. Grabbing the book was easier than putting in a DVD and hoping I'd find the right episode. The differences between the book and the anime are considerable. The book skims over most of Chagum's time with Balsa, giving all of the attention to the very early days and the very end. Balsa, in the book, is still killing people when necessary. The descriptions of Nayug also don't match the beauty of Nayug in the anime. I suppose words have a hard time with that.
Walden, Mark. H.I.V.E.: Escape Velocity - This volume in the series about the boarding school for budding criminal masterminds moves along at a brisk pace. It never stopped moving, and it never lost my attention. In this volume, several threads that had been building in previous volumes came to a head. All the main characters got moments to show off their skills in performing missions that were billed as impossible. Anyone who read and liked the first two volumes will like this one. I am very curious as to what happens in book four. The library has it, so I'll probably get it some time in September.
Webster, Jean. The Four Pools Mystery - Another Project Gutenberg book. I thought I'd give it a try on the strength of having liked Daddy Longlegs and Dear Enemy, but I didn't make it much more than a chapter. The book smacked me hard with racism. The setting is a plantation with a lot of black servants (I'm assuming servants rather than slaves by the date of publication. Nothing in the book anchored the book to a date). They speak in heavy dialect, have unreasonable superstitions and aren't very bright. Not recommended.
Webster, Jean. Jerry - Project Gutenberg has two versions of this book under slightly different titles. I read this one but had also downloaded Jerry Junior in case it was actually a different book. The book is insubstantial fluff about two Americans in Italy and the way they stumble into a romance. I nearly ran aground on the broken English spoken by the Italian characters. It was spelt phonetically and seemed to me unlikely to actually be the way Italians would speak English.
Wellman, Manly Wade. Devil's Asteroid - I think, by length, this is more of a short story, but, as I got it from Project Gutenberg, I'm going to count it. Forbidden by treaty from imposing the death penalty on humans, martians have come up with a worse punishment-- an asteroid prison where the inmates gradually devolve into more and more primitive creatures.
Wood, Maryrose. The Incorrigible Children of Ashton Place: The Mysterious Howling - As I read this, I kept thinking that I'd stop soon. I wasn't engaged by what was happening, and I didn't attach to any of the characters. I'm curious enough about the dangling mysteries to try the next volume, but I'm not sure I'll finish it. I'm afraid of not getting answers.
Allison, Jennifer. Gilda Joyce Psychic Investigator - I didn't really enjoy this. I kept waiting for consequences to crash in on Gilda, but the consequences for her actions were never as severe as what I imagined. I wouldn't have enjoyed reading about consequences-- I'd have cringed and skimmed. I just couldn't help anxiously expecting them. Because she made me so anxious, I never really warmed to Gilda. I felt a lot of sympathy for her missing her dead father and for her writing letters to him. I just didn't feel a lot of sympathy otherwise. I think I'd have liked the book if I'd read it when I was about ten.
Arnold, Edwin L. Gulliver of Mars - I got about a third of the way into this Project Gutenberg book. I got cranky with the style. It's a first person narrative. A U.S. naval officer makes a wish that lands him on Mars. He's very judgmental of the society he finds there, and the narrative seemed to me to support his judgment. I didn't like the sense that the narrator knew better than anyone else.
Avatar the Last Airbender: Lost Adventures - This is a collection of short stories, in graphic format, set throughout the series. They're all moments not presented in the show. They vary a lot in tone, from very funny to a little sad. I enjoyed the stories, but few of them have stuck with me. Delia has read half of the book and has enjoyed it, so it has appeal for kids, too. Scott, the one who actually bought the book, hasn't had a chance to read it yet.
Baum, L. Frank. The Enchanted Island of Yew - This book is one of the Project Gutenberg books I downloaded for my time offline while visiting my relatives. It's a peculiar story in many ways-- I found myself finishing it and wanting to talk about it. The story centers on a female fairy who desperately wants a change, so she gets a mortal girl to change her into a mortal for year. In order that she may have the opportunity to travel and explore and have adventures, she decides to be transformed into a young man rather than a girl. I wanted more exploration of what that change meant, but it was just sort of there. Additional oddness came from the sidekick the hero picked up-- The sidekick was a young man who'd always had everything going his way and who was bored with it. He wanted to suffer pain, humiliation and all forms of misery. He pursues that with enthusiasm. It all comes across as not quite a children's book. A warning for anyone who may go looking for this-- There is a chapter that's appallingly racist. It could be skipped without any damage to the story. I wish I thought there was fanfic out there for this. Maybe if I do Yuletide this year, I'll ask for it.
Brockway, Connie. So Enchanting - I read more of this book than I expected to. I actually expected to bounce off it hard. I often do with romances. I ended up not finishing the book because I was peeved by the difficulties between the hero and heroine-- She has something like animal empathy, and he's a skeptic specializing in catching frauds. He actually exposed her and her first husband as phony psychics years ago. The non-romance plot felt a bit rushed and a bit out of left field.
McCall Smith, Alexander. Akimbo and the Elephants - In this installment in the series, Akimbo decides to stop poachers by making them think he's one of them so that he can find out their plans. I liked this less well than Akimbo and the Snakes. I knew Akimbo would be fine, but I disliked him actually seeking out danger.
McCall Smith, Alexander. Akimbo and the Lions - In this volume of the series, Akimbo raises an abandoned lion cub. There's no great depth to the story, and it runs along in predictable lines. That's not to say that it's bad. I'm not the intended audience-- It's aimed at early elementary school readers.
McCall Smith, Alexander. 44 Scotland Street - This book was written as a serial, published in a newspaper. I found it too fragmented to follow. Each character was interesting, but there were so many of them that I lost track of who was who, and just as I'd get interested in what was going on with one character, the narrative would shift to another. I think I might have liked it more if I'd been reading it as it was serialized. As it was, I didn't finish it. I didn't even make it very far in. I did open it at random in a couple of places and read for a while there. If I'd been truly desperate for something to read, I probably would have forced my way through.
McCall Smith, Alexander. Friends, Lovers, Chocolate - I feel like there aren't enough interesting characters in this series. I'm not sure why because I can name (well, not name. I've forgotten the names) three or four characters off the top of my head. I'm just vaguely dissatisfied with this book. I think some of it is that I keep waiting for something good to happen to the main character, but nothing does.
McCall Smith, Alexander. The Saturday Big Tent Wedding Party - This is the most recent book in the No. 1 Ladies Detective Agency series, or, at least, the most recent one the library has. I enjoyed this installment. I liked visiting with the characters. There was nothing very surprising in this installment.
McCall Smith, Alexander. The Sunday Philosophy Club - I liked the characters in this book, but I thought that the mystery, such as it was, was rather thin. The book might have been better without it. I don't think this series will displace The No. 1 Ladies' Detective Agency in my affections, but it wasn't a bad way to pass some time. I've got a hold on the next book in the series.
Morris, William. Child Christopher and Goldilind the Fair - I didn't finish this, but I did read about two thirds of it. Then I stopped and realized that I didn't care and didn't really want to read the rest. This is another Project Gutenberg book. It's written in a pseudo-archaic style that annoyed me. I mainly got as far as I did because I started the book late at night while I was playing Delia's going to bed CD. I kept waiting for something interesting to happen, and it didn't.
Naruto 50-51 - I've lost track of who all these people fighting are. In some of the fights, I wasn't sure who I should be pulling for because I simply didn't know who was who. I'm waiting for something interesting to happen, and I suspect I may have to wait quite a while.
Nesbit, E. The Book of Dragons - I'm pretty sure I read this some time ago, but I didn't remember any of the stories. Nesbit has a way of making the most unbelievable things seem commonplace. These stories are all like that. This is another Project Gutenberg book.
Nesbit, E. The Enchanted Castle - I thought I'd read this, but if I had, I'd forgotten most of it. I got this from Project Gutenberg to read during my time without internet. This version contained some odd formatting and typos, but I could figure out what was meant. I liked the magic ring, and I felt that the children behaved as children would. There was one unfortunate chapter in which one of the children put on blackface.
Piper, H. Beam. The Cosmic Computer - This is a Project Gutenberg book. I got through about half of this before I gave up. I wasn't interested in the battle the characters were about to undertake, and I was finding too much cognitive dissonance in the places where my politics differ from Piper's. (There was also dissonance in everybody smoking, the behavior of the women, the way that computers worked.) The story follows a young man who attempts to help his home planet recover economically by encouraging people to hunt for a super computer he believes to be mythical. He plans to use the search to get industry going and to build a space ship and so on.
Shearin, Lisa. The Trouble with Demons - I can't remember if I ever blogged the second book in this series (I think it was called Armed and Magical, but I might be misremembering, and I can't be bothered to go look it up). This is the third book. I have mixed feelings about this book-- It was fun, quite a ride, but the overarching plot advanced not one bit. I'm not sure how long the author can keep up the frenetic pace, with the heroine hunted by all sorts of people and tied to an evil artifact that wants her to feed it souls, without losing my interest. I got tired just reading this book. I don't think the heroine has had a chance to stop and draw breath anywhere in the series. This is not to say that the book-- and the series-- hasn't been entertaining. It was, enough so that I put the next two books into my Amazon cart so that I don't lose track of them. I'm just not sure I can sustain my interest when all that happens is another huge crisis.
Swendson, Shanna. Don't Hex With Texas - This is (I'm guessing) the fourth book in a series. Apart from this one, I've only read the first book, Enchanted, Inc. (and I'm not sure I actually finished it). I can't remember why I put this on my list of library books to read, but I did, and I had fun with it. Pity it's the only Swendson book the library has. The heroine is a person immune to magic. She had a job working for a large magical company in New York but ended up leaving to return to her home town in Texas. After she's been home for a while, magical events start happening in her home town, and she reports them to her former employer. Her former employer sends people to investigate. There's a good bit of humor involved.
Uehashi, Nahoko. Moribito: Guardian of the Spirit - I got this from the library in hopes that it would help with my Parallels Fic story. The differences between the novel and the anime were sufficient, however, that I mainly relied on it for the spelling of certain terms. Grabbing the book was easier than putting in a DVD and hoping I'd find the right episode. The differences between the book and the anime are considerable. The book skims over most of Chagum's time with Balsa, giving all of the attention to the very early days and the very end. Balsa, in the book, is still killing people when necessary. The descriptions of Nayug also don't match the beauty of Nayug in the anime. I suppose words have a hard time with that.
Walden, Mark. H.I.V.E.: Escape Velocity - This volume in the series about the boarding school for budding criminal masterminds moves along at a brisk pace. It never stopped moving, and it never lost my attention. In this volume, several threads that had been building in previous volumes came to a head. All the main characters got moments to show off their skills in performing missions that were billed as impossible. Anyone who read and liked the first two volumes will like this one. I am very curious as to what happens in book four. The library has it, so I'll probably get it some time in September.
Webster, Jean. The Four Pools Mystery - Another Project Gutenberg book. I thought I'd give it a try on the strength of having liked Daddy Longlegs and Dear Enemy, but I didn't make it much more than a chapter. The book smacked me hard with racism. The setting is a plantation with a lot of black servants (I'm assuming servants rather than slaves by the date of publication. Nothing in the book anchored the book to a date). They speak in heavy dialect, have unreasonable superstitions and aren't very bright. Not recommended.
Webster, Jean. Jerry - Project Gutenberg has two versions of this book under slightly different titles. I read this one but had also downloaded Jerry Junior in case it was actually a different book. The book is insubstantial fluff about two Americans in Italy and the way they stumble into a romance. I nearly ran aground on the broken English spoken by the Italian characters. It was spelt phonetically and seemed to me unlikely to actually be the way Italians would speak English.
Wellman, Manly Wade. Devil's Asteroid - I think, by length, this is more of a short story, but, as I got it from Project Gutenberg, I'm going to count it. Forbidden by treaty from imposing the death penalty on humans, martians have come up with a worse punishment-- an asteroid prison where the inmates gradually devolve into more and more primitive creatures.
Wood, Maryrose. The Incorrigible Children of Ashton Place: The Mysterious Howling - As I read this, I kept thinking that I'd stop soon. I wasn't engaged by what was happening, and I didn't attach to any of the characters. I'm curious enough about the dangling mysteries to try the next volume, but I'm not sure I'll finish it. I'm afraid of not getting answers.
