Book Logging
Jun. 6th, 2016 10:34 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
the_rckCat Burglar Black - I didn’t actually like this one very much. I think that the blurb from Lemony Snicket on the back cover should have given me warning, but I don’t think I actually looked at the back cover. I’m sort of vaguely curious about what comes next, but I wasn’t impressed by the main character, and I wanted more female friendships than I got and more logic.
Fink, Joseph. Welcome to Night Vale - This was my second attempt on this book. This time, I got the audiobook from the library (a couple of different people had told me that listening to the book was easier than reading it) and listened to it in small bits. I’m not sure that listening made a difference. I still couldn’t handle more than a chapter or two at a time because the reality disconnect shifted after longer than that so that everything just seemed normal. I don’t think that Scott will want to listen to this one. He listens to audiobooks in much longer chunks than I do, and he has a different level of tolerance for this particular type of weirdness.
Krulik, Theodore. Roger Zelazny - This is a sort of biography (one chapter of that) and book of literary analysis of Zelazny’s work that was written in the early 1980s, so there’re about twelve years of Zelazny’s life and work that aren’t included. The author did extensive interviews with Zelazny himself and quotes from that fairly extensively. There’s a definite isn’t-this-wonderful-and-brilliant tone to the text which I kind of expected given that this was written with Zelazny’s approval, but that kind of put me off. The book made me realize that I have pretty much zero memory of the details of most of Zelazny’s stories because I haven’t reread them even once. The titles are familiar, but the plots described really, really aren’t. I was interested to have it confirmed that Zelazny never knew, when he started a story, where it was going to end up. Oh, and there were a fair number of points in the text where I knew what the author was saying but the words he used didn’t actually say what he seemed to mean and didn’t make sense if taken as written. Basically, it needed a decent copyeditor.
Lumberjanes. 3, A Terrible Plan - I laughed a lot at this one. I think I enjoyed the group attempting to earn badges more than I did the duo having adventures (those were fun, too, just not as amusing). I still like that cleverness is the way to resolve big problems. I wish I could get Cordelia to read these.
Natsume’s Book of Friends 1 - I thought this was pretty cute, but I’m puzzled as to how the story can possibly extend for as many volumes as Amazon tells me there are. The library only has this volume and the second. I’m not sure I’m interested enough to use interlibrary loan, and I know I’m not interested enough to buy, not even if we had masses of money instead of a bank account that’s stretched too far.
Ninja-rella - This was cute and a very rapid read. Instead of a romance, the main character is interested in a job as a bodyguard. Otherwise, it’s pretty much Cinderella.
Rex, Adam. Smek for President! - I had tried to read this once before and had to return it to the library before I finished. This time, I got the audiobook, and I actually managed to finish. I enjoyed this one. It’s not on the same level as The True Meaning of Smek Day, but it’s still pretty darned fun. I got kind of confused by one of the plots. I still enjoyed it, and my confusion may be me not paying enough attention. But it may also be that there wasn’t enough detail there to make things clear.
Sutherland, John. Who Betrays Elizabeth Bennet? - This is a collection of essays that address little (or not so little) contradictions and/or mysteries in classic works of English literature. I found the author’s style engaging enough that I’ve requested one of his other books in this line through interlibrary loan. I can’t, sadly, get the third book that way because none of the libraries in the network have it in paper. I think that I’d have enjoyed this more if I’d actually read more of the books that were discussed, but I found enough context in each essay that I could understand what was being said, and these were all books I’d at least heard of.
Wodehouse, P.G. Very Good, Jeeves - This is the audiobook as read by Jonathan Cecil. I was not enchanted by the reading, and I’m not convinced this was the right way to introduce myself to Wodehouse (it also put Scott off completely). Maybe reading would be better? Maybe an audiobook narrated by someone else? (The library has audiobooks read by three or four other people.) I just kept finding myself drowning in details without my attention being engaged.
Started but not finished:
Beil, Michael D. The Red Blazer Girls: The Mistaken Masterpiece - I got this as a book on CD from the library. It’s another thing that GoodReads recommended, a mystery aimed at kids (the main character is twelve). I was not at all impressed. The story is first person present tense, and the first three chapters failed entirely to interest me. The person reading the book was pretty good, but this was not my sort of thing. All that happened in the first three chapters was the main character getting her nose broken at swimming practice, her getting it treated, and her father managing to arrange that she and her friends meet a movie star. None of those things grabbed me at all.
Lowell, Amy. A Dome of Many-Coloured Glass - I don’t remember what put me off about this book of poetry. I just know that I only got about twenty poems in before I gave up. I think that Lowell just didn’t write in a style that appealed to me. I did find some bits that I might use as titles some day, though, so it wasn’t an entire loss. I don’t think that I actually disliked Lowell’s poetry so much as that I didn’t care. Maybe poetry is not my thing?
McGraw, Eloise Jarvis. Merry Go Round In Oz - This really clunked. I don’t expect a lot of deep characterization or world building from an Oz book, but I expect the prose to flow reasonably, and I expect things to be playful. This book didn’t work that way for me. There was a lot of showing people who were kind of weird in pathetic ways as opposed to in ways that sparked. I also didn’t feel any real urgency to the plot. I don’t mind there not being a villain (in the part I read, anyway), but I would like some actual difficulties for the characters to overcome.
Nash, Ogden. The Best of Ogden Nash - I had high hopes for this because I remembered liking Nash in anthologies, but I ended up finding a lot of these poems very awkward. I skipped around a little after making an effort to read from the beginning. The editor organized things thematically and put Nash’s poems on family and fatherhood first which I’m not convinced is playing to Nash’s strengths. I found many of them amusing and/or true, but they didn’t grab me particularly hard or make me laugh. I think that the poems I’d seen in anthologies were almost all animal poems.
Roger Landgridge’s Snarked! Book One: Forks and Hope - I didn’t get very far with this one. I probably wouldn’t have bothered if I’d realized that the main characters were the Walrus and the Carpenter. I don’t like them in Alice, and I didn’t like them here. I think they’re less annoying here, probably, but there’s ever so much more of them, so it felt worse.
Fink, Joseph. Welcome to Night Vale - This was my second attempt on this book. This time, I got the audiobook from the library (a couple of different people had told me that listening to the book was easier than reading it) and listened to it in small bits. I’m not sure that listening made a difference. I still couldn’t handle more than a chapter or two at a time because the reality disconnect shifted after longer than that so that everything just seemed normal. I don’t think that Scott will want to listen to this one. He listens to audiobooks in much longer chunks than I do, and he has a different level of tolerance for this particular type of weirdness.
Krulik, Theodore. Roger Zelazny - This is a sort of biography (one chapter of that) and book of literary analysis of Zelazny’s work that was written in the early 1980s, so there’re about twelve years of Zelazny’s life and work that aren’t included. The author did extensive interviews with Zelazny himself and quotes from that fairly extensively. There’s a definite isn’t-this-wonderful-and-brilliant tone to the text which I kind of expected given that this was written with Zelazny’s approval, but that kind of put me off. The book made me realize that I have pretty much zero memory of the details of most of Zelazny’s stories because I haven’t reread them even once. The titles are familiar, but the plots described really, really aren’t. I was interested to have it confirmed that Zelazny never knew, when he started a story, where it was going to end up. Oh, and there were a fair number of points in the text where I knew what the author was saying but the words he used didn’t actually say what he seemed to mean and didn’t make sense if taken as written. Basically, it needed a decent copyeditor.
Lumberjanes. 3, A Terrible Plan - I laughed a lot at this one. I think I enjoyed the group attempting to earn badges more than I did the duo having adventures (those were fun, too, just not as amusing). I still like that cleverness is the way to resolve big problems. I wish I could get Cordelia to read these.
Natsume’s Book of Friends 1 - I thought this was pretty cute, but I’m puzzled as to how the story can possibly extend for as many volumes as Amazon tells me there are. The library only has this volume and the second. I’m not sure I’m interested enough to use interlibrary loan, and I know I’m not interested enough to buy, not even if we had masses of money instead of a bank account that’s stretched too far.
Ninja-rella - This was cute and a very rapid read. Instead of a romance, the main character is interested in a job as a bodyguard. Otherwise, it’s pretty much Cinderella.
Rex, Adam. Smek for President! - I had tried to read this once before and had to return it to the library before I finished. This time, I got the audiobook, and I actually managed to finish. I enjoyed this one. It’s not on the same level as The True Meaning of Smek Day, but it’s still pretty darned fun. I got kind of confused by one of the plots. I still enjoyed it, and my confusion may be me not paying enough attention. But it may also be that there wasn’t enough detail there to make things clear.
Sutherland, John. Who Betrays Elizabeth Bennet? - This is a collection of essays that address little (or not so little) contradictions and/or mysteries in classic works of English literature. I found the author’s style engaging enough that I’ve requested one of his other books in this line through interlibrary loan. I can’t, sadly, get the third book that way because none of the libraries in the network have it in paper. I think that I’d have enjoyed this more if I’d actually read more of the books that were discussed, but I found enough context in each essay that I could understand what was being said, and these were all books I’d at least heard of.
Wodehouse, P.G. Very Good, Jeeves - This is the audiobook as read by Jonathan Cecil. I was not enchanted by the reading, and I’m not convinced this was the right way to introduce myself to Wodehouse (it also put Scott off completely). Maybe reading would be better? Maybe an audiobook narrated by someone else? (The library has audiobooks read by three or four other people.) I just kept finding myself drowning in details without my attention being engaged.
Started but not finished:
Beil, Michael D. The Red Blazer Girls: The Mistaken Masterpiece - I got this as a book on CD from the library. It’s another thing that GoodReads recommended, a mystery aimed at kids (the main character is twelve). I was not at all impressed. The story is first person present tense, and the first three chapters failed entirely to interest me. The person reading the book was pretty good, but this was not my sort of thing. All that happened in the first three chapters was the main character getting her nose broken at swimming practice, her getting it treated, and her father managing to arrange that she and her friends meet a movie star. None of those things grabbed me at all.
Lowell, Amy. A Dome of Many-Coloured Glass - I don’t remember what put me off about this book of poetry. I just know that I only got about twenty poems in before I gave up. I think that Lowell just didn’t write in a style that appealed to me. I did find some bits that I might use as titles some day, though, so it wasn’t an entire loss. I don’t think that I actually disliked Lowell’s poetry so much as that I didn’t care. Maybe poetry is not my thing?
McGraw, Eloise Jarvis. Merry Go Round In Oz - This really clunked. I don’t expect a lot of deep characterization or world building from an Oz book, but I expect the prose to flow reasonably, and I expect things to be playful. This book didn’t work that way for me. There was a lot of showing people who were kind of weird in pathetic ways as opposed to in ways that sparked. I also didn’t feel any real urgency to the plot. I don’t mind there not being a villain (in the part I read, anyway), but I would like some actual difficulties for the characters to overcome.
Nash, Ogden. The Best of Ogden Nash - I had high hopes for this because I remembered liking Nash in anthologies, but I ended up finding a lot of these poems very awkward. I skipped around a little after making an effort to read from the beginning. The editor organized things thematically and put Nash’s poems on family and fatherhood first which I’m not convinced is playing to Nash’s strengths. I found many of them amusing and/or true, but they didn’t grab me particularly hard or make me laugh. I think that the poems I’d seen in anthologies were almost all animal poems.
Roger Landgridge’s Snarked! Book One: Forks and Hope - I didn’t get very far with this one. I probably wouldn’t have bothered if I’d realized that the main characters were the Walrus and the Carpenter. I don’t like them in Alice, and I didn’t like them here. I think they’re less annoying here, probably, but there’s ever so much more of them, so it felt worse.
no subject
Date: 2016-06-13 04:27 pm (UTC)I've had to get the librarian to do a special request for me a couple of times when I was trying to obtain obscure videos. In theory, our online request system should allow you to access all of WorldCat, not just the MNLink system; but in practice, the pulldown box where it should happen doesn't give that option. But the librarians can do it for me.
no subject
Date: 2016-06-14 01:45 am (UTC)Sadly, our library only lends paper books to other libraries, so we can't borrow anything else.
I hope you enjoy the book.