Favorite Books and Current Reads

[zamisk]

I think they have plans for Saga to go on at least to 60 issues, probably more... You're in for a long wait. My monthly pull list is:
-Avengers
-Constantine
-Batgirl
-Dirk Gently
-East of West
-Invincible
-Lobo
-Rumble
-Runaways
-Saga
-Teen Titans
-Walking Dead
-We Stand On Guard
...but I might shake it up again soon and drop some of them to replace with new ones.

Would you recommend any of those for me, Trifkin?

[Trifkin]

I can be patient when it comes to comics. :3

For you, I would probably recommend the Jonathan Maberry one, but I haven't read it yet. I zoomed through the Daughter of Athena (it was disappointing), and am now working on Second Paradigm.

[zamisk]

This winter break I have read through the Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy series, and am almost done Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance. Hitchhiker's Guide is still one of my favorite things, and Zen is really giving me a lot to think about. The writer spends a bit too much time stroking himself off for being so smart, but there are also some interesting things to think about in there as well. I feel like there have been another book or two, but I can't think of them right now.

Next up is Siddartha, If You Meet Buddha on the Road, Kill Him, or The Electric Kool-Aid Acid Test. A little different than my usual scifi books, but I'm in the mood these days.

[Archaic Sage]

I've just finished reading The Lie Tree, which won a prestigious award in the UK recently. It's a YA book about a girl on the cusp of womanhood, set in the 1800s, with a harsh father and a distant mother. They have to leave their home due to a scandal and then it develops into both a crime and fantasy story. It's ends well with lots of closure. I'd recommend it.

[zamisk]

Hyperion by Dan Simmons is an instant favorite, it's absolutely riveting. Carnet de Voyage by Craig Thompson is an amazing comic travel journal, and I plan on doing something similar in Europe after I graduate next year.

[Lumnaya]

[zamisk]

It's not a narrative really, just some nice personal thoughts and sketches of people and places.

Thanks for your pitches, I might check out a few of those!

[Archaic Sage]

I recently finished The Shadow of What Was Lost, it was really enjoyable and an easy read. About a world where people are born with magic abilities that appear after a certain event but these people are bound by a treaty set by non magic people due to a war 15 years prior. Can't really say much else without revealing loads but I loved it. It was previously an indie self published novel picked up by a traditional publishing house on the strength of indie sales.

Currently I'm reading Age of Myth which I'm not enjoying as much but I've been pretty ill the past two weeks so not really read anything and not had the chance to get into it yet. The four chapters I've read so far are good but I've just not clicked yet although it's changing on chapter 4 and I'm starting to connect more.

[noodles]

finished the Dark Tower series. Holy shit

Now i'm on the midquel, The Wind Through the Keyhole. Kind of therapeutic

[Sampson]

[Theresia]

Just finished reading Akira and, man, if this was good!
Did a full immersion today reading the last two volumes, it really caught me like nothing could manage in a looong time.
I can't wait for my copy of the movie which should arrive in a few days.

[noodles]

[Archaic Sage]

I've now read all of the Mistborn trilogy, and am now two into the novellas post event. They are nice and easy reads. Brandon Sanderson's magic system is very consistent, which I like.

[Archaic Sage]

So since September, I've read An Echo of Things to Come, which was a really interesting read. It was the follow up for A Shadow of What Was Lost and carries on straight from where the first story left off. There was a lot of character development in this story and there is more magic, which more consistency to the magic. There were a few too many flashback scenes to move the story forward, but generally these flash backs where interesting and genuinely did help the story but felt a little shoehorned in. The characters are good though and the writing style is easy and fast, similar to Sanderson.

I've also read Age of Swords which is the follow up to Age of Myth and also goes straight into the story where the first one left off. It's got a great set of characters and the mystic is one that I really connected with and really felt for her in this story as it makes her make some really big decisions that changes her viewpoint on life. There's also a lot more interesting political intrigue and a lot of parallels to segregation and discrimination between races in the real world. The magic makes a little sense, but it's not a key theme yet. It's an awesome set of stories.

I'm currently reading La Belle Sauvage, which is Philip Pullman's latest story. A prequel to His Dark Materials and I'm only a few chapters in but it's really well written, the story is engaging and easy to read and it's bringing flashbacks of the original series which I read probably 15 years ago with clarity - always a good sign!

I'm aiming for 12 books this year, which may not sound like a lot but I only really read before bed and took a few weeks out due to illness and holidays to I'm on my eleventh and will totally finish before November is out so I think I'll hit my target - and they'll all be new books to me this year. Unlike last year where I read all of the Harry Potters again .

[Lumnaya]

Therapy by David Lodge: A very enjoyable and moving portrait/story of a plump, middle-aged man who has made a successful career as a sitcom writer yet is more out of touch with modern times than he realizes. (His name is Lawrence but everyone calls him Tubby. Even his close friends do, and he's too embarrassed to get them to call him Lawrence.) It's bittersweet but honest, never too cynical or one-note, and often really funny too.

The Great Water by Živko Čingo: The story of two boys in a prison-like orphanage in Macedonia. Parts of it are cruel, in fact there is cruelty in every chapter — yet the atmosphere is more strange, bittersweet and poetic than truly bleak. The character of the other, “strange” boy is interesting, the people working in the orphanage are more troubled than truly evil, and the voice of the narrator is very lively. A good read.

20,000 Leagues Under the Sea by Jules Verne: Pleasant, but somewhat shallow. There is little in the way of plot or characterization (only Nemo is interesting), the focus is mostly on showing how great science is — yet the science in the book is mostly imaginary and thus unreliable. There are also countless, endless enumerations of marine species, to the point that it becomes almost comical (was Verne paid by the word or…?). I stopped halfway through to read another book. Then picked it up again and finished it, but mostly for the images and mood.

The Great Gatsby by Scott Fitzgerald: … Um. I don't often get the “I couldn't relate to any of the characters / I didn't like any of the characters, so I didn't like the book” syndrome, but I'm afraid this time I did. Didn't teach me anything I didn't know either. The writing is good.

Near to the Wild Heart by Clarice Lispector: Not an easy read because it's entirely subjective, though it's also interesting because of that. I have to admit there's a lot of it I didn't really get, but the few parts I could get and relate to were really beautiful.

Jerusalem by Gonçalo M. Tavares: Short and intense. The story is very harsh, about madness, violence and faith (I think I would have absolutely hated the book because of all the suffering and injustice in it had I read it when I was younger — and it's hard not to feel deep hatred for one of the characters in particular… which is an interesting effect in itself, I felt like I was getting sucked into the story but not in the way I wanted to). The writing is very concise and very analytical. There were times when I really liked it because of how original it is, times when I wasn't into it at all and wanted to stop because of how cold it was. Though I think it had more to do with my mood at the time than with the book itself.

The Sea by Yōko Ogawa: A bit disappointed by this one. It's a compilation of short stories; some are nice, some are so anecdotal they don't really stand on their own, most of them are not quite as subtle as the author seems to think they are. The one with the typist would have been very good if she had stopped earlier.

The Sweet Poison Cook by Arto Paasilinna: Got it for free at the bookstore — it's dark comedy that lacks any subtlety. Forgettable.

Orlando by Virginia Woolf: I had already read it once but Woolf's writings are always better when read a second time, I think. So far this is my favourite one by her; of course it's interesting for its analysis and critique of society and gender roles, but what I hadn't heard from its reputation is how funny and imaginative it is. The first half is more about fantasied history than anything else, and the biographer is such an unrealiable narrator it's a miracle the story makes sense at all — but it's really vivid and fun too. The second half is more hit-and-miss, some parts are excellent, others feel uninspired. If Orlando had kept travelling instead of settling down at home I think this would be my favourite book ever.

Hopscotch by Julio Cortázar: This one is quite brilliant, though I would have liked it more if I enjoyed discussing literary theory and commentary. It's about an Argentinian man living as an expat in Paris in 1950 with his girlfriend and a club of intellectuals; he's an introverted, tormented jerk. (In fact nearly all the men in the story are jerks.) It's not a book you should read for its plot, it's more about mood, searching and not finding, wonder and disillusionment; it's often more about art than about life, though it's also about the absurdity of valuing art over life. It has many experimental ideas that work well. It's flawed too — again, the discussions about literary theory and philosophy are a bit of a bore, and… well, it's debatable whether Cortázar or only his characters are sexist. You could make a case for either. There are two proposed ways of reading the book: sequentially like you would any other book, though that means missing out on about a third of the text — or following the numbers at the end of each chapter, jumping back and forth in a seemingly non-sequential way. But there is no impressive trick where the same chapter could have two different meanings depending on the context here; it's the same story, only with various fragments added (most of them extradiegetic, a few of them intradiegetic, including quite a few fragments and quotes… among them a poem by Octavio Paz which ended up being my favourite passage in the entire book). Emily Morine's review is really good (it is long and includes some partial spoilers): https://www.librarything.com/review/45073423

Ru by Kim Thúy: A series of snapshots about the life of an immigrant from Vietnam to Québec. It's not presented as autobiographical but really seems to be (it fits the author's biography). The writing is minimal in a good way: chapters can be as short as one or two lines, they rarely take more than a page, but they're always very clear and vivid. A good short read, I think it works well.

Certainement pas [Not a Clue] by Chloé Delaume – This one was a ride. Sordid and depressing but also very playful, fun and funny. It's experimental and the plot isn't easy to describe, let's just say it involves six patients in an asylum (and they're not “funny” patients like you would see in a comedy, their stories really are tragic and disturbing) plus the omniscient narrator as a character in a game of Clue. Yes, the board game. (Literally or metaphorically — these words don't really apply here.) The book is striking without taking itself too seriously; it's exciting, original and personal, though the quirkiness won't be for everyone (e.g. the concept behind the book which may or may not make sense, the way the omniscient narrator just inserts nouns freely in the middle of sentences without so much as a conjunction, or the one short chapter that's printed in Comic Sans MS… which is entirely justified in context). I liked it very much, could easily picture someone else hating it. The English translation isn't out yet, but it's planned for a December release — I don't know why it took so long, the original was written in 2004. There's at least one paragraph that could do with an update, the world has got crazier since then.

Dune by Frank Herbert — No description necessary, it was pretty great. I had seen two movie adaptations and saw my cousin play the video game, but that was so long ago that they didn't distract me.

The Temple of My Familiar by Alice Walker — You should read The Color Purple first. (I strongly recommend reading it in any case because it's one of my favourite books.) The Temple of My Familiar is a partial sequel and openly a book with a message; it has a balanced view, characters that feel real and who you can empathise with despite their flaws. A “spiritual”/supernatural reading of the story is suggested, but the story still makes sense in a realistic way. But it's a little bit longer than it should have been, and not quite as moving or memorable as The Color Purple.

7 by Tristan Garcia — Definitely flawed, but interesting too. Garcia writes both fiction and philosophy, and it shows: 7 consists of seven short stories, each one based on a particular imaginary object or phenomenon. Several of the ideas are interesting, but none of the actual stories is quite believable; too often, characters act in a way no real person would in such a situation, or speak in a way that comes across as fake. Some of the endings are really cliché too. I have read a few reviews after finishing it and one person recommended a sci-fi novel (Replay by Ken Grimwood) as a better alternative to the last story. Are there seven better alternatives though? I don't know. Despite all its failings, which really should have “killed” the book, the ideas kept me interested.

In Watermelon Sugar by Richard Brautigan — I had seen “iDEATH” and “published in 2002” and thought Brautigan was still alive and had written something about our digital era, which would have been really interesting. Nope, it was written in 1964 and the “i” was just a coincidence (unless Apple took inspiration from it, which would be really weird). I liked it anyway, just as I liked Trout Fishing in America. Surreal, ambiguous and bittersweet.

La Disparition [A Void] by Georges Perec — Not nearly as good as Life: A User's Manual, though I wasn't expecting it to be. Experimental writing, difficult to follow, at times funny, psychedelic, at times outrageous. I read it quickly, partly because I couldn't really take the story seriously — how much of it was dictated by the writing constraint? Though it's still a decent read and an impressive feat. I would recommend other works by Perec before this one. (On a side note, the title of the English translation is better than the French one.)

Nine Folds Make a Paper Swan by Ruth Gilligan — Pretty good. I liked the storylines with the woman in the early 1910s and the boy in the 1950s better than the one set in contemporary Ireland though.

The Left Hand of Darkness by Ursula K. Le Guin — Has this one become dated recently? The protagonist is an emissary for a sort of planetary consortium, on a mission to convince the inhabitants of a distant, icy planet to join. The thing is, the aliens are androgynous / ambisexual… but the emissary uses masculine pronouns to refer to them. He is well aware of this problem, but I felt like his language went against the point and I had to do a double take so I wouldn't picture Estraven looking like, say, commander Worf. (It could also pose interesting problems if the novel were translated into some languages!) But this is only one aspect of the book — apart from that, and from the first chapter which almost made me put the book down (lengthy descriptions of fussy protocolar ceremonies, I wasn't into the book yet and she started with the most boring part), it's very good. I particularly liked the part towards the end when… well I can't really say it without spoiling the book.