Favorite Books and Current Reads

[nectarsis]

WOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO my next 4 Xanth books FINALLY arrived today..many sleepless nights ahead.

[Kinokokao]

Man.

Counterpoint: Song of the Fallen is kind of terrible. I can't get into it.

I'm considering ditching it and starting something else. The characters are assholes and the slave/master dynamic just totally isn't working for me.

[SirthOsiris]

So, almost finished Feast for Crows. After noticing that, I decided to grab Dance with Dragons.

Dear lord, the hard back is huge.

[Skele Von Mann]

Congratulations! You got a book, shield, door stopper, and bashing weapon all in one!

[SirthOsiris]

Pulled off the sleeve and DAMN that's a nice crest. Makes me feel all Celtic inside for some reason.

[skybluepink]

I'm currently reading my way through everything written by stephen gregory.
My favourite so far is Perils and Dangers.

[Riseatrance]

Been reading Kara no Kyoukai, translated into Chinese. I'm reading through it slowly because quite frankly Nasu-writing is convoluted as hell and 90% of it is pretty much unreadable, even in the original language (which I have also read). But it is really interesting to read the story in my native language.

[Kinokokao]

I thought the hardcover (Dance with Dragons) was way easier to read than the paperbacks. I mostly propped it up against a pillow and read it that way in bed.

Although I couldn't fit it into my purse, so that sucked.

[Rain]

[Kinokokao]

goddammit rain go finish it

I officially reshelved Counterpoint and instead started The Catch-Trap since it just arrived.

I've been wanting to read The Catch-Trap for, oh, nearly a fucking decade now, so totally worth it. Had the devil of a time tracking down a used copy at Powell's.

So far I'm liking it. It's about two trapeze artists at a circus during the 40s-50s.

I feel incredibly morbid saying this, but, come on they're trapeze artists. It's like watching NASCAR. I'm totally waiting for one of them to fall and get hurt.

Like.

99% of the book is going to be me being like FALL DAMN YOU! FALL AND GET HURT!

I'm an awful person.

[Maxine MagicFox]

Preordered Lost Heroes of Olympus: Son of Neptune and Ranger's Apprentice: Lost Stories today. Both books aren't due for release until the 4th. FUUUUUUCK... x_x I can't take the wait any longer!!

FINALLY in the mood to take on Dan Brown's Lost Symbol. Fuck you, I don't care, I love Dan Brown's books and Angels & Demons will forever be one of my favorite books of all time. Lost Symbol is starting off slow, but T-T he's already killed off one of my favorite characters (with me screaming the entire time, NO, STOP, LOOK OUT BEHIND YOU!! YOU'RE ABOUT TO DIE!!!), so... :3 there's probably a lot of hope for the book. I doubt I'll be disappointed. It does worry me, though, that some things are predictable so far...


Come on, you better do better than that, Brown. :3
Either way, it's still fun reading the characters solving the puzzles and stuff.

[Maxine MagicFox]

*mutters* A library book I've been waiting for suddenly became available this morning. *Sigh* Now my "Current Reads" list is at 10 books, not including the two books I preordered last night for the 4th. .... I need to do something about this.

READ READ READ READ READ!!

<_<; Why can't I keep my current reads list down to a minimum? 5 books at most?!

Got annoyed with Dan Brown last night after the "villain's reason revealed" (you know the let down you got when you realized who the villain was in Twilight Princess? Yeah, kinda like that). So I put it down and picked up Warrior Heir. Since I took today off of work and have no real intentions of leaving my bed, it is my SICK DAY book. .... ^_^ Why am I such a sucker for the teen-adolescent-realizes-he-has-powers/destiny books?! ~

It never gets old. I don't care how cliche it is. *snuggles back down in bed with tissues, cough drops, and her nook*

Let's see if I can't do something about my current reads list.

[Kinokokao]

Book monogamist, here. If I'm gonna start a new book, the old one is either finished or dead to me.

@The Catch Trap

oh

my

god

I was up until 4am reading, and only stopped because my husband was having trouble sleeping and complained about the light. Usually my reading in bed doesn't bother him at all, so I felt bad -- and it wasn't like I could possibly finish the book right there anyway.

So good! So good. So much better than anything I've read in a while. I actually caught myself burying deeper into the book and getting antsy with anticipation. I've mentioned the "boat house" in Havemercy (Jubelon will get this reference especially) and, well, this book has some scenes that can almost rival it in a few places. Almost.

There are a few things I don't love about the book. For starters, and this is the big one: age difference. Tommy is 14 when the book begins, and only 15 when the relationship starts. It's the 40s, he's very mature, he's a professional trapeze artist, etc etc -- doesn't break the fact there's an 8 year age difference. I'd call it a deal breaker except it totally isn't -- the book's so damn good I can completely forgive this, even though I'd be much more comfortable with him being closer to 16-17.

Second, there are typos. I completely forgive that one, and they either stopped occurring or I stopped noticing them after the first 5 chapters or so. A caught an instance of words repeating, obvious typography mistakes (Famiily, for example) and one misspelling of a character's name. Completely irrelevant to my enjoyment of the book, but it must be said I did notice these errors.

Another issue for me: strange breaks in the POV structure. The narrative occasionally skips into the future ("It was to be the only promise they never broke to each other" "He never did forget that day at the beach" etc) which, to me, breaks the flow and honestly the story would read better without such unwarranted snippets. The narrator occasionally peers too deeply into the psychology and inner-workings of the characters when the "psychic distance" (thanks, Mr Kino, for that writer vocab word) is supposedly close-in on Tommy. Most of the psychoanalysis comes from Tommy, which is fine, and it works well especially during the big emotional turning points of the book. I found it very bizarre that in a few scenes, without any page break, Tommy would walk away from the scene and the story would stay with two characters, having a conversation that, by all rules of narrative structure, we shouldn't have heard. It's, again, a supremely minor quirk, but just enough to keep this book from truly excelling.

Which is entirely not to say I'm enjoying the hell out of it. I walked into work this morning with my head buried in the book, read all during my lunch break, and plan to start reading the second I get home. I thought about the book all day.

One other thing work mentioning: it's set in the 40s-50s, and naturally has to deal with the prejudice against homosexuality. I totally don't go for gay angst/discovery/struggle type drama -- I read mostly fantasy for escapism, after all. In the same breath, I'll admit that OK-HOMO sucks (ie, happy gay world in which everyone's gay and it's perfectly natural and accepted that you fuck whatever you feel... the Prisoner, for example, when it completely violated all rules of logic that all three radically different cultures apparently had no qualms whatsoever with male/male romance, and none of the 4 leads ever once questioned that another man might reject them based solely on the fact that, you know, it's two dudes. Contrast this with Havemercy and the Arlemagne prince fiasco, or Lord of the White Hell, which actually dealt with such issues, even if they weren't quite A Strong and Sudden Thaw's level of 'stone the queers hurkhukrk jesus!' anti-homo). Anyway, the book deals perfectly with Tommy and Mario's feelings in some places, and majorly missteps in others, in my opinion. At the risk of overly repeating myself, this doesn't mean I dislike the book, quite contrary, but it is just, again, one small thing that hurts my the overall impression.

I'm about halfway through the book, though, so we'll see where this is all going to end up.

[Maxine MagicFox]

:3 So Warrior Heir turned into one of those books that I just couldn't stop reading. ^_^ I liked the character of Jack, who reminded me just slightly of Percy Jackson without the fun comebacks.

Book was kind of a splash of a little bit of Hunger Games with wizards. Just a touch. It was a good splash, though. I loved Jack's character and actually found myself truly agreeing with a lot of the character's emotions. So MC-Connection+1.

A little bit of a minus on the ending, though. Not enough to detract any stars in my rating, but was kind of a deus ex machina moment. Unlike Katniss who had to fuck over the system all on her own, Jack got a little bit of unlikely help, though in the books defense, there were several points that it WARNS of such an outcome. Still. The stage god was floating~ so to speak.

All in all, a really good book and once I reduce my current reads list, I will definitely hit up the next one in the series. ^_^

[Maxine MagicFox]